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GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 



GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 



BY 



OTTO MANTHEY-ZORN 

PROFESSOR OF GERMAN, AMHERST COLLEGE 




BOSTON 
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 

1922 



_^3 



COPYRIGHT'I922'By 
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 



THE PtIMPTON PRESS • NOR WOOD • MASS ACHUSETTS 
PEINTED'IN-THE'UNITED'STATES- OF • AMERICA 



JUL 13 1322 

©CI.A()77556 



FOREWORD 

IN THE summer of 1920 Amherst College granted me a 
leave of absence until January, 192 1, to go to Germany 
and attempt to analyse the state of mind in which the 
Germans were facing the conditions and problems resulting 
from defeat and the revolution. 

As chance would have it, the summer and fall of 1920 were 
unusually opportune for such a study. The logic of events 
culminating in the conference at Spa had finally made the 
Germans begin to realize the extent of their defeat and of their 
obligations. An ever greater number were beginning to see 
the futility of wilful blindness or resentment, and coming 
to the conclusion that it was better to face conditions and 
seek a way of meeting them. Also the mere economic situa- 
tion did not seem as hopeless to the Germans as it does today. 
Work was beginning to be generally resumed. The mark had 
depreciated until its value was about two cents, but compen- 
sation for most grades of work and returns on most varieties 
of investments had risen in proportion to the mark's fall. The 
purchasing value of the mark within Germany was then only a 
shade above its actual value on the world market. The entire 
social fabric seemed to be organizing itself upon a basis ap- 
proximating the actual economic condition of the country. 

Everything below the surface, to be sure, politics and the 
whole spiritual life of the country, was as chaotic as it is 
today. But the momentary physical and economic relief gave 
some real impetus toward an attempt at broad reconstruction, 
and made it possible for an observer to get an idea of the 
direction the reconstruction will ultimately take, the principles 
that have a chance to survive through the process, and the 



vi FOREWORD 

spiritual resources which, released by the revolution, will give 
those principles the necessary force. 

My chief concern was the study of these spiritual forces. 
These may indeed manifest themselves in any of the larger 
fields of activity: in economics and politics, religion, education, 
or in art. I am not a student of economics or of politics. My 
investigations in this field were merely to test the state of 
mind with which the people were meeting the political situa- 
tion, and the spiritual attitude they assumed to the supreme 
economic problem of their daily bread. I found a situation 
so confused and so threatened by distress and passion, that 
positive spiritual forces were exerting no influence over it 
as yet. I have not dared to venture upon a description of the 
religious life of new Germany. There were evidences of 
changes that may in time have large importance, but they do 
not lend themselves to either fair or adequate treatment. The 
institutional church of Germany had allowed itself to become 
so entirely a part of the state that, when the latter fell, a full 
share of the discredit rested upon the church. The laws of 
the new government, intended to guarantee a greater freedom 
to religious expression, could do little to produce a new spirit. 
Whatever attempts at organized expression of a renewed re- 
ligious spirit I could find were quite apart from the church and 
so vague that any description would lead to false impressions. 
In liberal education a new spirit is calmly exerting itself and is 
squarely and bravely meeting the new conditions. My main 
interest, however,, is centered upon the mind and spirit of men 
and peoples as expressed in literature, and upon the spiritual 
forces that men and peoples evidence in their attitude to the 
great expressions of literature. 

In teaching German literature the question of the relation of 
the drama to the ruling principles and forces of life is con- 
stantly brought into the foreground. The drama is considered 
by most German authors and critics to be the highest form of 
literary expression. Even the ordinary theater-goer has a pe- 
culiar reverence for what the German calls a drama as distin- 
guished from a play, and he considers sacrilegious any attempt 



FOREWORD vii 

to make the drama a mere form of entertainment or a source of 
profit. The object of the dramatist is to create in his characters 
living men, who embody, or come into conflict with, the funda- 
mental forces of life. The German dramatist must have not 
only the ability to see and express such forces, but also a suffi- 
ciently strong faith in the possession of them by man to make 
the drama convincing. Where such faith is lacking, the 
dramatist is expected to show at least a strong longing for it. 
The German audience, by national habit, is constantly looking 
for evidence of this faith in the great characters before it, in 
order that each hearer may acquire an insight into the funda- 
mentals of his own life. 

The question often arose in my classes, whether this was 
really a guiding principle of the German drama. Therefore, 
when the opportunity came to test this thesis, by observing 
dramatist and stage and audience in a serious crisis, I was glad 
to seize upon it. My leave of absence gave me the opportunity 
which rarely comes to a student of literature: to test in the 
reality of actual events the statements concerning the German 
drama which I had taught in my classes. If, in the emergency, 
dramatists could be found attempting to express faith, or at 
least a strong longing for faith, in a new German character, if 
audiences could be found eagerly searching the dramas for a 
faith to serve as a basis for individual and national recon- 
struction, then an important question in the study of the 
German drama would be answered, and it would be possible 
to determine the state of mind which has the greatest chance 
of outlasting the present crisis and ultimately controlling 
reconstruction. 

I devoted the largest part of my investigation to the situation 
in Berlin and Munich, because these cities are the most active 
and dominating centers of Germany, and because they are most 
opposed to one another in purpose and method. I went to 
Weimar to observe the interesting attempt to reestablish its 
traditional spiritual leadership. Such other German cities as I 
visited, among them Hamburg, Hannover and Leipzig, were in 
the main following the lead of Berlin and Weimar. They 



viii FOREWORD 

were important simply in their special interpretation of the 
forces emanating from these centers. In Salzburg, I witnessed 
a strong concerted effort by the leaders of Austria to devise a 
program of spiritual reconstruction by enlisting the power of 
art in saving what remains of the country. 

The first result that I must record is purely negative: not 
one of the poets, old or new, has enough faith or enough 
insight in redeeming forces to be able to express such faith 
clearly, or to present it to the people with strong conviction. 
It is encouraging, however, to note that the foremost poets of 
the nation are not giving themselves over to despondency, but 
are trying to rise above the confusion and to calm the disturbed 
spirits of the people, hoping that serenity will give them light 
and insight. A similar longing to prepare the way for faith 
in a new spirit governs the ventures of Weimar and Salzburg. 
The most important discovery, however, is that there has arisen 
throughout Germany a new audience which has developed a 
strong consciousness of the relation of the drama to personal 
and national character. In it are the people who are facing 
the vast responsibilities arising out of the revolution and are 
seeking for standards with which to judge them. They are 
convinced, moreover, that they cannot find such standards 
unless they know themselves and the fundamental national 
forces of which they are a part. They believe that they can 
gain this knowledge by studying the characters of the great 
dramas of their past and by encouraging the better drama- 
tists of their own time to help them search. For this purpose 
they have organized powerful drama leagues. 

It pt-oved impossible to treat this audience merely in its 
relation to the drama and the theatre. The same people con- 
stitute that calm progressive element among the Democrats 
and Majority Socialists which is comparatively free from the 
general political confusion. The organizations for popular 
liberal education are composed almost entirely of these same 
people, and are able to maintain their strongly liberal, non- 
vocational character because of the high standards these men 
attain tlirough their relation to art. 



FOREWORD ix 

Because this new audience is still in the making, and its 
position within German life is far from being fully established 
or recognized, the description of its activity is constantly inter- 
rupted by personal interpretations. The results derive a con- 
siderable degree of certainty, however, from the fact that the 
activity of this group, especially in its relation to the drama, 
is not altogether new. The revolution has given it the first 
real opportunity and has enormously increased its size; but 
the history of its growth goes far enough back into German 
Hfe to establish its permanency with some degree of assurance. 

That which most impresses the observer with the power of 
this group, and gives him reason to believe that its standards 
will be those that ultimately will prevail in the process of re- 
construction, is the extreme patience it shows in the search 
for standards and its serenity in the presence of the country's 
chaos. 

Otto Manthey-Zorn 

Amherst College 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Foreword v 

I. The Struggle with Confusion 3 

II. Education, Old and New 30 

III. Youth in Revolt 46 

IV. The People of Berlin and Their Theatre . . 60 
V. Weimar 95 

VI. The Mind of Bavaria 109 

VII. Austria's Dream 124 

A Final Word 132 

Index 137 



izi 



GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 



GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

I 

THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 



DO THEY repent?" No other question was so in- 
cessantly put to me upon my return from five months 
travel through defeated Germany. In most instances 
it was the expression of a sincere desire to win back the faith 
in humankind that the sight of Germany in war had rudely 
shaken. To people of this frame of mind the visible repent- 
ance of the German people is as necessary a condition to an 
honest renewal of relations as the penitence of a serious trans- 
gressor in their own midst. The more definite their code of 
morals, the more insistent are they on the confessions of the 
sinner and the more prepared to receive him back within the 
fold, if he repent. Others who asked the same question nerv- 
ously hoped for a negative answer. They had enjoyed to the 
full the hatreds of the war and the sense of superiority it gave 
them, or even the opportunities for material and spiritual profit- 
eering, and now feared that they might lose their advantage. 
But there is no definite answer to this prevailing question. 

The German nation is not down upon its knees before the 
other nations of the world. The sight of its defeat is horrible 
enough. The pillorying of defeated sinners is a spectacle that 
human justice craves and victors always demand. But to see 
a whole nation prostrate before its fellow nations to confess its 
sins, is a horror that becomes almost unendurable, even as you 
only visualize it in presence of the spiritual disintegrations of 
" unrepentant " defeat. You feel that the kneeling, if it were 
sincere, might well be a symptom of a disease so serious as to 

3 



4 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

seem incurable. The legend of the Prodigal Son is incom- 
plete without the character of the father. 

The German nation is repentant, however, in that it has 
turned against those men and thoughts that ruled it in the 
disastrous days before the war. This repentance is the more 
sincere in that the German people have turned against former 
thoughts more than against the men whom their peculiar 
system had made their rulers and, as such, executors of these 
thoughts. The princes are in exile and are easily forgotten 
by the great majority. Their replacement is a matter of 
political readjustment which can be organized with time and 
studious application and popular good will. The revolt against 
former habits of thought is a more serious affair. Those men 
who think at all now find that they can no longer trust the 
standards by which their thoughts were once directed. They 
find that the standards by which they judged their most inti- 
mate actions, their relations to their fellowmen, their attitude 
to the state and even to the church, were not genuinely theirs 
in the sense of being instinctive, but were artificially imposed 
upon them by a strange, mighty, selfish force that suddenly 
exploded in its last burst of overbearance. Now they must 
seek new standards by searching for those spiritual powers 
that are genuinely their own. 



n 

What with defeat and economic and political hardships, 
however, the times are not conducive to this most difficult 
and delicate spiritual task. Defeat has thrown most Germans 
into a confusion which, however explicable, arouses the disgust 
one feels on seeing men becoming hysterical in face of sudden 
disaster. They have lost faith in themselves and in the exist- 
ence of fair play anywhere. They hate the old regime that 
brought them into competition and war, just as they hate the 
thing that brought on their revolution and, as they see it, dis- 
order and uncertainty. They impatiently distrust the men 
who offer a remedy for their misery. They close their eyes 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 5 

and clench their teeth and try to live as best they can from 
day to day. If they have money, piles of it, they spend it madly 
and try only to avoid the actual clutches of the law. This 
money, they say, is no good anyway; it is only bulky paper 
that will at best buy nothing but narcotics. So why not live 
and get drunk on drink and food and jewels and excitement? 
If they have no money, they close their eyes and tighten their 
belts and dream. They dream their pet political and social 
theories and philosophies; but always with their eyes tightly 
closed to conditions as they really are. Any excess is good, 
if only the dream be colorful enough and take them far 
enough away from actual conditions. Those who are not rich 
enough to live to excess, or refined enough to dream to excess, 
exhaust themselves in despair and hatred and gloomiest apathy. 
And then a large part merely starves. 

The disintegrating force of this confusion is clearly illus- 
trated by the mere struggle for daily food. Partly out of a 
desire to supply all the people with at least a scant minimum, 
but partly also as a most powerful bid for popularity, the 
government has framed laws for the distribution of food. It is 
able to enforce them to only a very small extent, however. The 
situation of the country probably demands that these laws 
be as stringent as they are, but faithful observance of them 
would put everybody upon starvation rations. Consequently 
no one with money enough to pay the price demanded by the 
illicit trade will hesitate to break the law. If his conscience 
troubles him, he quiets it by saying to himself that, after all, 
the government is merely a makeshift as yet and not one in 
which he can place his faith, and that its laws are therefore 
not sacred. Food-profiteering is consequently one of the most 
flourishing occupations. In the summer of 1920 complaints 
against the profiteering by the hotels of Berlin became so 
persistent that the government was obliged to take action. 
The proprietors threatened to close down if the demands were 
insisted upon, and the government had to yield. This same 
situation has made the farmer secretive and extorting. He 
gives deceitful answers to the government officials who come to 



6 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

take an inventory of his crops, and instead of bringing his 
food to market he sits at home to pass upon the bids and 
entreaties of the wealthy who come to him. He represents 
the latest and largest class of war profiteers. Whoever can 
afford it, is his willing victim. Even in the smaller cities, 
where almost every family has a back-yard garden, the wor- 
ship of the new beast-god, the ** hamster " or German chip- 
munk, is more universal than ever was the popularity of the 
*' blond beast " in Germany's wildest hour. Several times 
a week each family sends a delegate out to the farm to play 
the " hamster," to gather in by begging and buying at any 
price what eggs or butter or other produce can be obtained. 
" To go hamstering " is the most popular of the new expressions 
that the times have added to the German language. The 
poor in every class of society, whose scant rations taste all 
the more bitter because they cannot take part in this new 
illicit national sport, waste themselves in futile anger and 
vainly threaten to emulate the Russian example and organize 
raids on the farmers. It is not in the German character to 
indulge in such an extreme disregard for authority; but at 
present the respect for law is dormant. 

As in the search for food, so in most economic questions 
dire need and greed confuse the problem and upset the minds 
of the people. It seems improbable that these situations will 
be squarely met or adequate solutions will be found, until the 
people examine themselves and, on the basis of such an exami- 
nation, clear the confusion of their minds and find a new faith 
to rise again above the stage of mere animal existence. 



Ill 

The efforts toward political readjustment are beset with 
equal distress, and present as little chance for the thorough 
examination and the calm and patient application necessary 
to revise old standards or search for new ones. Not a single 
one of the broader national movements that seek to make 
adjustments to the new conditions presents a clear outline. 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 7 

The revolution itself appears to have been an outburst of 
uncontrollable natural forces rather than the expression of any 
large popular will. It seems simply to have been the inevi- 
table result of an unsuccessful war waged for four years on 
the basis of general conscription. Most Germans now admit 
that their army was in a sadly demoralized condition; but 
conditions behind the lines during those days seem to have 
been even less stable. The spirit of the country had grown in- 
creasingly seditious since the impossible winter of 191 6, when 
the people were forced to live on turnips and on bread half 
filled with sawdust. The ghastly pallor that that winter 
placed upon the faces of the children was too strong a com- 
petitor to the frantic exhortation of the military authorities 
to carry on. At the first undeniable evidence of defeat the 
country broke down from sheer exhaustion, and the revolution 
that followed was due to this rather than to the American 
demands for democratization or to the agitation of the German 
Socialists. 

The Socialists took control, merely because they were the 
only organized body that was prepared even theoretically for 
the emergency. Many of them were well-intentioned, a few 
were able, but the great majority were inexperienced and in- 
competent. Most of the departments were poorly manned, 
money was scarce, and disorder soon prevailed. The chaos 
was increased by a competition for the highest places between 
the two principal factions of the Socialists. This competition 
was ended by putting in charge of the highest offices a repre- 
sentative of each of the factions, who quarreled with each other 
over every important order. When this situation became im- 
possible, the extreme Left was ousted from the government and 
went into opposition. The Majority Socialists now had to 
bear the entire odium for the chaos of the country, especially 
since they held control without legal sanction. They deter- 
mined to secure that sanction from the people by issuing a 
call for the Constituent Assembly. From time to time the 
elections to that assembly were postponed, simply because the 
provisional government had no definite plan for a constitution. 



8 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

The helpless officials eagerly seized upon some constructive 
suggestions which appeared in a newspaper article by Hugo 
Preuss; and, although Preuss was not a Socialist but a Demo- 
crat, they called upon him to frame the constitution. The 
elections to the assembly favored the liberal parties, Majority 
Socialist and Democratic. The vote at these elections, how- 
ever, is construed in Germany today as expressing not so 
much a democratic conviction as a general desire for law and 
order with which to get under way. 

The signing of the treaty came in the midst of the Con- 
stituent Assembly. I asked several of the men who had been 
most prominent in urging the signing of that treaty, and each 
one gave the same answer: he was not sure that he had acted 
wisely. You cannot get a more definite answer to any of the 
leading questions in Germany today. The condition of the 
country is still so chaotic that its leaders cannot see clearly or 
have definite convictions. At the time most Germans evi- 
dently thought that the treaty was largely a bluff; but they 
were soon undeceived. With the resulting despair came a 
strong wave of nationalism and a popular swing to the Right. 
The people as a whole quickly reasoned that, since the new 
order was bringing confusion and oppression, the old order 
must be restored. This mood was encouraged by reactionary 
agitators, who, as soon as they had the slightest success, lost 
their heads and organized the stupid and criminal attempt in 
the spring of 1920, headed by Kapp and Ludendorff, to rein- 
state the old regime. They acted too quickly and with too 
much of the old Prussian spirit. Though the Socialist govern- 
ment at first gave way, it soon managed to drive them out again 
by organizing a general strike throughout the empire. But 
the strike with its agitation was also too violent a measure to 
combat a movement so little real. Within the industrial centers 
of the Ruhr and Saxony it set in motion radical elements 
which had to be put down by force. Because on the one hand 
the treaty in forbidding a militia required a professional army, 
and on the other hand the government Socialists forbade men 
of their party to take up the profession of soldier, Noske was 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 9 

obliged to move against the Ruhr with a reactionary army, 
hostile to his methods. This army answered red excesses 
with white terror, and so increased the confusion and the un- 
popularity of the government in the country at large. 

In the midst of this turmoil the campaigning for the elec- 
tions to the first German Parliament began. It was merely an 
insane clash of emotions. Chauvinism won and put in control 
Hugo Stinnes and his clever helpers, who roughly represent the 
biggest industries of Germany. The government bloc that 
assumed control was clearly obedient to the wishes of Stinnes, 
though he himself kept in the background. It was popularly 
called the " legalized Kapp Putsch." The defeated Moderate 
Socialists went over to the opposition. Their control and their 
program of socialization had utterly failed. In combining 
more closely with the extreme Left, moreover, they found them- 
selves deprived of all convincing party propaganda excepting 
the cry of passion. So Germany today is roughly divided 
into two passionately opposed camps. On the Left they cry: 
" Down with religion and the church and capitalism is done 
for and Utopia will come! " and on the Right: " Down with 
the Jews, the enemies of religion and the instigators to bolshe- 
vism, and order will be restored and prosperity rise again!" 

Because of his opposition to the reparation agreement 
Stinnes withdrew his party from the government in the spring 
of 192 1 and the Majority Socialists half-heartedly relinquished 
their opposition. Thereby the dominant power within the 
government bloc fell to the lot of Germany's great neutral 
party, the Catholic Center, whose party program is best de- 
scribed by the single word, compromise. To meet the new 
situation it characteristically changed front. The right wing 
under Fehrenbach, which had held to Stinnes, surrendered 
the party leadership to the more radical wing under Wirth 
and Erzberger. Because of the unpopularity of the decision 
of the Entente in regard to the division of Upper Silesia, the 
Wirth Cabinet had to resign in October 1921. No other way 
could be found to form a government, however, than to per- 
suade Wirth again to undertake the formation of a cabinet. 



lo GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

He succeeded under most curious circumstances, which show 
that Germany's progress toward poUtical stability is negligible. 
Wirth's own party, the Center, and the Democrats permitted 
members to join only as individuals, without a guarantee of 
party support. The Majority Socialists, on the other hand, 
rallied more closely to the Chancellor and even persuaded the 
Independent Socialists to abate their opposition. 

So the whole political situation is a brew of seething un- 
certainties. The reason lies partly in the general confusion 
of mind in Germany, heightened by the economic turmoil of 
the times. But the awkwardness of popular political thought 
combined with an unyielding party dogmatism is even more 
to blame. The Germans are hopeless dogmatists. Each man 
has his pet little faith in his own careful formulation. Every 
question you put as to his views on the social or political, eco- 
nomic or cultural conditions of his country is an occasion for 
him to expound his own philosophy and then violently to attack 
the Treaty of Versailles; but always he will end in an even more 
violent attack upon those of his own countrymen who hold 
views different from his own. Germany's greatest disease 
has always been this sort of dogmatism. Out of it grew 
German efficiency and superspecialization, so lacking in 
broader outlook that it could be perverted by clever systems of 
control to any end whatever. Today it acts as the most dis- 
turbing obstacle to the process that would restore some sort 
of balance to the national mind, suffering under the shock of 
defeat and revolution. An examination of the principal po- 
litical parties of Germany makes one inclined to agree with the 
conviction of the many earnest men whom I approached, that 
Germany's political reconstruction must wait upon a thorough 
regeneration of the people. 

The party of the extreme Right, the National People's Party 
(all parties must have a democratic name, of course), is in 
the control of the old Junker crowd with its unabashed mon- 
archical and agrarian political rhetoric. Its members are 
bombastic sentimentalists, none of whom are able to realize 
the extent to which conditions in the country have changed. 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION ii 

They are conscious, however, of two political assets which 
they industriously nourish; the traditional affection for a 
divinely appointed ruler, and among the unthinking the un- 
bridled passion of resentment against the victor. On the 
crest of the wave of nationalism which swept the country 
at the elections in 1920 they managed to secure 65 seats. 
Their immediate program is purely negative. They want to 
prove the impotence of the present government, hoping that a 
general confusion will make necessary a reinstatement of their 
former " efficiency." They speak rhetorically of a return of 
the old emperor; but if, as they suspect, the Hohenzollern 
House has permanently lost its cause, they would as readily 
welcome the rule of a Wittelsbach to bring them and their 
system back to power. Since their end is, according to their 
claim, divinely inspired, they resort to any means whatever, 
even to plotting in conjunction with the extreme Communists. 
Individually they are a sad lot. If they have money, they use 
its power to evade the laws and to organize revels, at which 
they try to console themselves for the loss of the extravagant 
court functions. If they have no money, they weep and 
grieve and exhaust their starved bodies with feasts of hating. 
Their blindness makes them ridiculously futile. I met one 
of their leaders, after a meeting of the party in Berlin, in 
high spirits because a half dozen women of the people had 
joined their ranks within a fortnight. He seemed to see the 
entire city population thronging back into the fold. 

The German People's Party is practically the creation of 
Hugo Stinnes, the supreme industrial magnate of new Germany. 
Germany is full of stories of the plots and machinations of 
Hugo Stinnes. It seems that his strangle hold upon a large 
part of German industry was gained by the shrewd exploita- 
tion of the contract he made with the government during the 
war to rob the factories of Belgium and Northern France. He 
managed to arrange these operations so that none of the resti- 
tutions demanded by the treaty result in a personal loss to 
him. He is really the uncrowned ruler of the economic in- 
stitutions which the old system had carefully developed for 



12 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

its own purpose and for the recasting of which the new govern- 
ment has enunciated radical principles, though it has not been 
able to apply any of them to an appreciable extent. Stinnes, 
I am sure, is a man interested in the power of his purse rather 
than in the welfare of his country. His entry into politics, 
at the time of the national elections in 1920, was an attempt 
to find an efficient substitute for the old deposed monarchy 
to act as guardian of his treasury. He bought control wher- 
ever it was on sale. Forty per cent of the German press is 
said to belong to him, and his precautions went even to the 
extent of acquiring an interest in some of the highly professional 
critical journals. 

Before the national elections the German People's Party 
was a rather insignificant remnant of the nationalistic, semi- 
liberal parties of the old regime. By clever organization and 
vigorous propaganda Stinnes secured 61 seats for it in the 
Reichstag. Its program is squarely conservative along old 
capitalistic lines. Its appeal is in its promise of a quick return 
to prosperity and of protection against attacks upon capital 
by the Socialists. It takes no definite stand on the question 
of monarchy, though it offers a safe retreat to all those who 
are sentimentally attached to the old rulers but have not 
the courage to denounce the new constitution openly. Conse- 
quently the German People's Party becomes the refuge of most 
of the small capitalists of the country, of a large part of the 
petty bureaucrats of the old regime, and of most of the 
Protestant teachers and preachers. From among the last 
group the rhetoricians of the party are recruited, but the 
control and command rests solely with Stinnes and the 
lieutenants of big industry. 

The Catholic Center is very much the same in size and 
program that it was before the war. It is a well-organized, 
highly disciplined party, held together by church authority and 
frankly admitting and following a policy of political oppor- 
tunism. Its real leader is said to have been Matthias 
Erzberger, often described as the best hated man in Germany, 
who was under constant persecution from reactionary zealots 



rHE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 13 

and was finally murdered on August 26th, 192 1. Erzberger 
was a strong liberal and until the elections of 1920 held his 
party sternly to the support of the Majority Socialists in spite 
of violent internal opposition from South German members. 
Because these elections, however, expressed a decided popular 
turn to the Right, he had to relinquish his leadership to the 
conservative wing in accordance with the established discipline 
of his party. But when, in the spring of 1921, Stinnes refused 
to let his party approve of the reparation agreement and the 
Majority Socialists again were forced to enter the govern- 
ment bloc, thus giving it a more radical complexion, Erzberger 
resumed control. Though his lieutenant, Dr. Wirth, acted 
as Chancellor, Erzberger was really the dominant force in the 
government. Fear of what he might do probably maddened 
reactionary fanatics into killing him. 

The Democratic Party is another party of compromise. In 
the Constituent Assembly it was very numerous. At that 
time it had received the votes of all who wished to confess 
democratic leanings, either because they were sincere or 
simply in order to mollify the Entente while it was preparing 
the treaty. At the last election it secured only 45 seats, and 
even now its members are not necessarily honest democrats. 
Both of the conservative parties and the Center ban Jews 
from their ranks, so that all Jewish voters are forced to join 
one of the Socialist parties or the Democrats. As a result 
all conservatives of Jewish extraction ally themselves to the 
latter party, whatever the shade of their conservatism; and 
thus make impossible a clear party program. On the other 
hand, the best idealistic liberals and many of the foremost 
intellectual leaders of the country are members of the Demo- 
cratic party, and' win a great national respect for it because of 
their enlightened liberalism. The most respected element of the 
daily press is in the control of its members. And yet its in- 
fluence is strangely weak, owing partly to its false composition 
and partly to the tragic circumstance that here, as everywhere 
in the present crisis, the best idealists lack the power of trans- 
lating their principles into practical action. 



14 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

The three remaining parties are socialistic labor parties 
grading from mere progressives to extreme Communists. This 
general group polled forty-four per cent of the 26,000,000 
votes at the national elections in 1920. If it were united, it 
could easily sway the policy of the country; but its three 
parties fight with each other more dogmatically even than with 
the parties to their right. The old Majority Socialists contain 
most of the skilled laborers and all the large body of German 
liberals who prefer the slight Marxian dogmatism of this party 
to the political ineffectiveness of the Democrats. The Majority 
Socialists still have no seats in the Reichstag, more than any 
other single party. Their program is one of progressive social 
and political evolution. They still are Marxian in name and 
still use the vocabulary of class warfare; but all this appears 
principally as party habit, developed through party traditions 
and propaganda. Occasionally a fleeting hope of winning back 
the dissenters into the fold gives new strength to the habit. 
But when they actually inaugurate laws for new social and 
political control, they ride with fair command and much care- 
ful reckoning the wave that is rolling Europe along to new 
organizations. 

The Independent Socialists function principally as an oppo- 
sition party to the Majority Socialists. They have no other 
program than to prove the older party poor Socialists. They 
accuse the older party of lack of class consciousness and claim 
that it abuses the authority of Marx. Marx is the Bible of 
all the socialistic parties in Germany, each claiming that it 
alone reads and interprets him aright. Because the Independ- 
ent Socialists have no definite program of constructive action, 
they do not realize the responsibility of government, and there- 
fore engage in extravagant propaganda of class rule, revo- 
lutionary action and full and immediate socialization of public 
utilities. Because the Majority Socialists were popularly held 
responsible for the chaotic conditions of the provisional re- 
publican government, the Independent Socialists had unex- 
pected success at the elections of 1920 and secured 80 seats. 
This success, however, was little to their advantage, inasmuch 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 15 

as it united moderates with irreconcilable extremists. I visited 
their palatial Berlin club rooms in the early August of 1920, 
just at the time when it seemed possible that the Russians 
might break through the Polish army into Germany in an 
attempt to spread the Bolshevist revolution through Europe. 
But in spite of the cynical glee of anticipated triumph that 
held the party together at the time, the melodramatic gathering 
of whispering groups, scattered through the rooms, gave me 
a sense of the ludicrous ineffectiveness of these people. The 
country merely smiled at their extravagant threats. At their 
convention in the fall of 1920 they fought each other so vio- 
lently over the party attitude to Lenine's commandments of 
the Third Internationale that the party split and sixty per cent 
of the members went over to the Communists. The remaining 
forty per cent are moderates who would sacrifice but a shade 
of party convictions if they were to rejoin the original Majority 
Socialists; but party dogmatism and the comfort of irre- 
ponsible opposition restrain them from taking that step. 

Because of this rift the Communist Party of Germany is at 
present of unwieldy size. It represents 3,200,000 voters. Its 
program consists theoretically of allegiance to the Russian 
leadership in World Revolution and Dictatorship of the Prole- 
tariat; actually it is a blind passion for some radical change 
which might improve the personal fortune of the individual 
members. Too many stories of Russian misery and Bolshevist 
misrule penetrate into Germany to make the desire for a 
Russian alliance, even among the most illiterate and starving, 
more than merely theoretical. The Communist leaders are 
of two groups. Some few of them are highly refined idealistic 
dreamers and poets who are able to divorce communistic 
ethics from Bolshevist practice and who revel in delightful 
dreams of blessed Utopias. Because the rank and file of 
German Communists are recruited from the most illiterate 
section of the population, the effect of these dreamers is not 
so disintegrating as it otherwise would be. The other leaders 
are demagogues who delight in their power to sway the masses 
as they please. I spoke to some of the most prominent and 



i6 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

found that they had far more ambition for political power 
than conviction regarding the principles which they hurled at 
the confused minds of their blind followe^rs. They do not 
hesitate to boast that they can make these hungry unthinking 
people do as they will. 

Thus not one of the German political parties has convictions 
sufficiently clear to enable it to assume a strong leadership. 
Nor has a single one sufficient strength in the Reichstag to 
govern without compromise both to the Left and Right, Above 
all things the country needs an education toward liberalism. 
If the spirit of party dogmatism can be checked, there is 
likely to be a significant strengthening of the intelligent pro- 
gressives among the Majority Socialists and Democrats. 
Within this group the constructive policy for the nation must 
originate. 

The chaos of the country is still so great and the problems 
confronting it so clouded, that even the clearest in this group 
are confused or fantastic in their views. I managed to in- 
sinuate myself into a closed meeting of the Democratic Party 
just before the opening of the Reichstag for its fall meeting 
in 1920. The principal speaker was Professor Troeltsch, con- 
sidered by many Germans of various parties the strongest and 
clearest liberal in Germany today. He reviewed the course 
of the revolution and tried to find some way out of the chaos. 
His remedy was rather far-fetched. He thought that in order 
to regain stability and to win back the respect of other nations, 
Germany must for a time organize on the plan of a greater 
Switzerland. A new federation of states should be created 
with Prussia dismembered, so as to put an end to its hegemony. 
A decentralized Germany, united by close ties, would allow 
each state to develop economically in accordance with its 
peculiar resources and would offer the only feasible remedy 
for the financial chaos. Under such a scheme Germany would 
revert to an agricultural state as far as possible; she would 
be able to feed herself, and, by thus cutting down the neces- 
sity for many of her imports, she would more quickly reestab- 
lish a trade balance. The excess industrial labor would be 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 17 

systematically distributed to work on farms. Any excess be- 
yond that would have to emigrate, but in an organized way so as 
not to lose the spiritual connection at least with the mother 
country. A militia, he thought, recruited in large part from the 
farming classes would be very effective in putting down any 
attempts at violence from radicals and reactionaries alike. 
After a lengthy period of recuperation by this method Germany 
could again take up her former history. 

The picture is too far removed from probable events. The 
discussion from the floor, however, was far more confusing. 
There was talk of opportunities of revenge and for sudden re- 
covery when the members of the Entente begin to quarrel with 
one another and similar sentimental dreams common among 
stupefied Germans. 

Shortly after this meeting I called upon the little, stoop- 
shouldered, emaciated, but extremely keen editor of Die 
Glocke, Max Beer, whom the Majority Socialists consider one 
of their most intelligent expounders. He is an author well 
known in England, where he lived for many years as corre- 
spondent of Vorwaerts, and wrote an excellent History of 
British Socialism. I was surprised that his idea of a remedy 
for the German confusion was almost identical with that of 
Professor Troeltsch, though it had a more socialistic coloring. 
The state, he figured, could supply from its reservations one 
hundred thousand families with five hectares of land each, 
leased to them for two hundred years. He would abolish fifty 
per cent of the universities and found agricultural schools, 
which would lay particular stress on truck gardening and 
poultry farming. He was opposed to emigration, however, 
and thought that all excess labor could be employed in building 
homes for workers. 

If these are among the clearest political thinkers of Germany, 
the country is still far from recovery. Yet these men see at 
least that conditions have changed. Both made the remark 
to me that probably only five per cent of the population is 
able to see that radical changes have taken place; that four 
out of five use this knowledge to profiteer; that only one per 



i8 GERMANY IN TRJFJIL 

cent devoted itself to an honest effort at rebuilding, and only 
a small fraction of that one per cent has any real ability 
to do so. 

TV 

But even though confusion so prevails in economic and 
political questions that no clear analyses of them are being 
made, and people are therefore blind to the fundamental tasks 
confronting them, yet there are impressive numbers of men, 
mostly among the laboring and lower middle classes, who at 
least know that they do not see and are determined to acquire 
the ability to see, however unaccustomed and slow the process 
may be. The belief that a greater intimacy with the best of 
art and education will best help them know themselves and 
the basic human and national powers in themselves, is a 
German tradition the importance of which the revolution 
brought home to these classes for the first time. I was told 
that the little Berlin suburb of Karlshorst, where mostly humble 
people live, assembled in town meeting after the revolution 
and alloted five million marks for higher education for their 
daughters instead of thinking of obtaining food. 

With the responsibilities which the revolution brought to 
them, the people of this class seem to have acquired also the 
consciousness of their dependence on art, that formerly was 
so characteristic of the educated middle classes. Like the 
latter they seem to have a realization of what art has accom- 
plished in German crises. To the German people the Renais- 
sance, for example, is principally the Reformation with Luther 
as its hero, not so much because he gave them religious free- 
dom, as because with his translation of the Bible he created 
for them a common language and made them free to express 
themselves intelligibly from one end of the nation to the other. 
The Germans also consider the great European political de- 
velopments and upheavals of the eighteenth century as quite 
secondary to the literary revolution of their " Storm and 
Stress," which gave them confidence in themselves and a con- 
sciousness of national individuality. 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 19 

But even this instinctive turning to art to find the way out 
of spiritual distress is not free from the dangers of confusion. 
Fanatics are attempting to distort it, and profiteers are schem- 
ing to use its power for personal gain. So-called prophets 
travel from city to city and exhort the inhabitants to congregate 
in the squares to sing and dance to regain health and joy in 
life. Large audiences are attracted by strange performances 
of new dances which in some mysterious way are to restore a 
new spiritual balance. New fads in art have never before 
made so bold or so successful an appeal for devout congrega- 
tions of faithful dupes. 

The most profitable distortion of this kind is the widely 
spread society of Dadaists, which through its art offers a final 
solution of every physical and spiritual problem. I visited its 
headquarters and publishing house in Hannover under the 
guidance of a literary critic of that city. I found a few rooms 
stacked to the ceiling with pamphlets and a few of their latest 
pictures tacked against the shelves. At least they called them 
pictures. They were boards plastered over with transfer 
tickets, small scraps of newspapers, wisps of hair, and a little 
hay and mud. The publisher and priest was a keen-eyed 
and raven-haired hunchback. With his cynical smile he asked 
me to guess at the titles of the pictures, and when I answered 
in a bantering way, he was a bit offended, though he tried 
not to show it. I tried to get him to tell me something about 
his Dadaism. He made a speech something like a barker 
at a circus about ultimate value and last secrets and " see for 
yourself." His talk came fast and his mocking eyes danced; 
but he explained nothing at all. When he heard that I was 
from the land of the universally desired dollar, he tried to 
talk business and his eyes danced even more. It seems that 
less than a year ago he had been a type-setter at a very 
low salary, but had saved fifty marks. With this and what 
money he could borrow on his unlimited nerve he had pub- 
lished his first Dada pamphlet of poems solving all problems 
but with no sense or rhyme or reason. The fish bit lustily and 
in a year he had published ninety volumes in half a million 



20 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

copies. He is a shrewd communistic capitalist. He gave me 
a few t5^ical pamphlets to ponder over. Before I left he 
introduced the youngest priest of Dadaism, his little month-old 
son, who sang some very good Dada songs, though he could 
not yet pronounce the mystic word itself, but would do so 
within a very short time, his father thought. 

Dadaism is advertised as the ultimate development of ex- 
pressionism. It claims to express the truth itself in its ab- 
stract reality by means of the most real materials of life and 
without selection. It turns its back upon all the media of the 
artists of bourgeois society, such as perspective and color, 
rhyme and logic, and harmony and counterpoint. It advo- 
cates new materials, such as bits of paper and dirt, and the 
new technique of " simultaneity " and " bruitism." Finally it 
boasts of destroying art itself and of being the international 
revolution. It is the keenest bit of advertising I have ever 
seen, expertly adjusted to the condition of a fagged and be- 
wildered nation. I have before me a novel of forty-nine pages, 
called Second through Brain, a bewildering confusion of 
adventure, cynicism, eroticism, even of type thrown helter 
skelter on the page. One tenth of the space is used to warn 
against imitations of the only true Dadaism, obtainable at 
Steegemann's in Hannover. Incidentally, this publishing house 
is using its present prosperity to publish very fine de luxe 
editions of standard authors, so that it might still have some 
business if the country should return to reason. 

The creed of Dadaism demands: 

"i. The international revolutionary union of all creative 
and intellectual persons in the world on the basis of radical 
Communism. 

2 . The introduction of progressive unemployment by means 
of a comprehensive mechanization of every activity. Only by 
unemployment does the individual acquire the chance of gain- 
ing knowlege of the truth of life and of finally accustoming 
himself to experience life. 

3. The immediate expropriation of property and the com- 
munistic feeding of all people, as well as the building of 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 21 

beautiful communistic cities which shall educate man to 
freedom." 

The Central Council favors: 

"(a) The daily, public dinner of all creative and intellec- 
tual people on the Potsdammer Platz (Berlin); 

{b) That all preachers and teachers subscribe to the dada- 
istic creed; 

(c) Relentless warfare against all so-called spiritual 
workers (Socialist poets), against their concealed middle-class 
ethics and against expressionism and post-classical education; 

{d) The immediate building of a national art-house; 

(e) Introduction of the simultaneous poem as official 
communistic prayer; 

(/) Surrender of the churches for performances of bruit- 
istic, simultaneous and dadaistic poems (by this they mean 
poems accompanied by an orchestra of typewriters, kettle- 
drums, rattles and pot covers); 

{g) Formation in every city with over 50,000 inhabitants 
of a dadaistic soviet to rearrange life; 

{h) Immediate execution of dadaistic propaganda with 
150 circuses to enlighten the proletariat; 

(i) Control of laws and ordinances by the dadaistic Cen- 
tral Council of the World Revolution; 

{k) Immediate regulation of the sexual relationship in the 
international dadaistic sense by dadaistic headquarters." ' 

This is, of course, merely a wildly extravagant perversion 
of the consciousness within the German people of the intimate 
relation between their art and their lives. It is keenly ad- 
justed to the confusions and the political extravagances of the 
times and therefore has a rather formidable success. But with 
the lessening of post-war diseases it will quickly die out, 
while the sane and less sensational movements in art and edu- 
cation will continue to grow in importance and influence. 

The general confusion, however, and the delicacy of the 
task, which demands that the very fundamentals of life be 

1 En Avant Dada, Richard Huelsenbeck, Hannover, 1920, p. 29. 



22 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

reviewed and revalued, are still clouding the minds of even 
the most honest and courageous thinkers. As a result over- 
zealous and oversensitive investigators are making curious per- 
versions of history which find a large response. I met a 
group of splendidly refined men in Munich who, in their effort 
to find a basis for a new unified German culture, have trans- 
planted themselves back into the Middle Ages and deny all 
later German developments including the Reformation. They 
place the responsibility for the present debacle not so much 
upon the modern statemen as upon Luther and the whole of 
German culture born of Protestantism, particularly upon Kant 
and Goethe and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. They attack 
Luther for having torn asunder the heart of the nation with 
complicated problems, and Kant for having stifled the nation's 
life by throwing it into a mad whirlpool of dialectics. They 
recommend to German youth that it disregard all modern 
philosophy and apply itself again to a study of the old 
German mystics of the Middle Ages and thus regain its sim- 
plicity. Reprints of these old mystics are being sold in large 
editions. But such distortions are slowly being overcome, and 
there appear more clearly the broad outlines at least of the 
essential problem. 



When the certainty of coming defeat slowly forced itself 
upon the minds of the people and patriotic enthusiasms weak- 
ened, disturbing criticism of the government and of the nation's 
very foundations arose. Those men who had the power and 
the courage to think began to search the history of their people 
and to examine the validity of the principles and of the 
national phrases with which the people had been urged to war. 
Dimly they began to suspect that there was something radi- 
cally wrong with the fundamental standards by which they 
were living. They began to see that the war had merely 
accentuated that wrong to the point where it must be faced. 
They caught a blurred vision of how a powerful force had 
tampered with their lives for generations, had robbed them of 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 23 

their individuality and made them into mere instruments. 
Just how they could thus have been abused, they do not as 
yet quite know. Even the bare outline of such a vision was 
terrifying in that it threatened the truth of every accepted 
standard. When, however, the picture takes on sharp out- 
lines, and becomes clear to the whole nation, it will be the 
principal incentive to definite reconstruction. 

Meanwhile to an important minority the picture is begin- 
ning to take the following form: On the one hand appears 
the unselfishly acquired idealism of Kant and Goethe and 
Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt and Stein and Hardenberg, 
a basis upon which the nation might have developed true 
to its best qualities. On the other hand some, at least, 
are beginning to see the true nature of that one-tracked, 
selfish system we call Prussianism and of the insidious fight 
which it has waged for generations against the finer, 
unsuspecting and unprotected idealism. Because of the 
refined, delicate qualities of idealism, the more robust 
material system could almost imperceptibly force it into its 
service. Because idealism held the best affections of the think- 
ing and flattered the sentimentalities of the unthinking, the 
system borrowed its language and manners, until like a true 
parasite it had assumed the outward appearance of its victim 
and thus could all the better work its cleverly concealed will. 
Finally it was enjoying from the people the respect and loyalty 
they owed to their idealism and in the latter's cloak it led 
them to their present downfall. It was a slow, relentless and 
insidious process. The system had, indeed, the honest strength 
of strict limitation of purpose; but to succeed it had to destroy 
the only basis of life of the nation that it wished to use. Its 
own life, therefore, had of necessity to be short, in spite of large 
ephemeral successes and in spite of such geniuses of restricted 
purpose as Frederick the Great and Bismarck and Treitschke. 
Success and genius, and the subtle borrowing of its garb, made 
it so attractive that the few alert and sensitive spirits of the 
nation, who before the war sensed and tried to disclose its 
real nature, could not convince their hearers. 



24 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

But today there are not a few who know that here lies the 
real disease of the nation, — men who are directing their eyes 
boldly upon the picture, however disheartening its aspect and 
however painful the conviction that accustomed standards 
must be revamped and freed from the old taint and that 
Kultur must be refined to culture. A more difficult spiritual 
problem cannot confront an individual, much less a nation. 
Kultur had not been a matter of the individual. It was a cul- 
ture minutely prepared and sternly dictated: replete with the 
comfort of a choice already made. Now each man is to 
be forced to make new judgments on his individual responsibil- 
ity, and yet upon the basis of his national character. The proc- 
ess must be slow. Its first stage is purely negative; the old 
standards seem to be wrong. As a result men do not know 
what to think or do. Then those who have the, courage strike 
out for a new balance. Their venture still is more a longing 
than an attainment. Some of the gentlest have retired wholly 
within themselves to dream of a spiritually regenerated and 
united nation, and unfold fantastic sentimentalities. Others 
have been given courage, because of their very yearning, to 
direct their eyes more squarely upon the essential problems, and 
they are making promising beginnings, though they themselves 
may still be near despondence. Their search for faith in life 
and in a nation is, however, the spectacle that held me during 
my stay with them and of which I shall speak in these essays. 
The process is one that will continue for a long time. My 
reports, therefore, will be only of the beginnings I have found, 
but these beginnings are not only interesting but of extreme 
importance in the study of reconstruction on its spiritual and, 
therefore, most important side. 



VI 

Before I started out for Germany, I felt sure that if there 
were any one within the nation who had his eyes wide open 
upon the real conditions of the country and possessed the 
courage and insight and faith to lead the way along a new 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 25 

and truer path, he would be found among the people's greatest 
poets. Some of the younger poets, I thought, who at the front 
had been forced into most intimate contact with the system 
and seen it crumble under stress after almost crushing the 
very life out of its subjects in an effort to maintain itself, 
would have been able to see its nature clearest and would 
have the clearest view of those powers which might bring the 
nation back to itself. But I could not find a single poet of the 
younger generation who had sufficiently risen above the con- 
fusion that surrounded him. Not one of them has given 
testimony of sufficiently strong faith in definite redeeming 
forces. There is not a single clear, convincing composition in 
a new drama or novel which unfolds before the people the 
forces that are trying to awaken within them. The confusion, 
and the jealousies and prejudices arising from confusion, de- 
mand for such a task unusual clearness of sight and force 
of conviction. 

Ernst Toller is the most promising of the younger poets of 
Germany. His drama, Die Wandlung, is an intensely bold 
human struggle to clear from cant and from national and 
personal conceit the path toward a solid foundation. Polit- 
ical prejudices within the audience, however, not only over- 
emphasize the minor weaknesses of the drama, but turn the 
very intensity of it into inartistic rhetoric. The reactionary 
government of Munich is still detaining him in prison because 
he took control of the Munich mobs during the last commu- 
nistic uprisings, though everybody admits that he did so merely 
in the hope of checking their excesses. Meanwhile the ex- 
treme Socialists of Prussia repeatedly try to hoot his play out 
of the theatre because they consider it reactionary propaganda. 

Richard Dehmel enlisted for the front in spite of his ad- 
vanced years and went through all the hardships of active 
service because he longed as one of the nation's leading poets 
to be in the midst of his people's sufferings and most intense 
deeds in order to test his faith in them. He came out of the 
war with a scathing accusation of the system but clutching 
hard at his belief in the people. His death, which occurred 



26 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

soon after the defeat, was brought on, as his most intimate 
friends informed me, by his inability to endure the spiritual 
dissolution of the country. 

Gerhart Hauptmann is without any hesitation accepted in 
Germany as the foremost poet. I had the privilege of being 
his guest on several occasions and of listening as he spoke to 
me of his nation's distress. Hauptmann's deep and genuine 
sympathy has made him the unusual poet that he is. He 
always tried to protect the soul of his people against the 
system; nor was he ever liked by the system's zealous servants. 
During the war he was not very sure of himself, afraid to 
hurt his people, it seems, whichever way he spoke. So he be- 
came abstract or tried to save his faith by seeking human 
qualities in situations remote from the confusion immediately 
before him. He has grown very old and nervous and when he 
speaks is plainly confused, often stopping his pictures before 
they are completed and seeking a better way to shape what 
rises before him. But he is most calm when asked if he has 
any fear lest his people be unable to rise above the disintegra- 
tion now at work. As he talked of this, his patience was the 
quality which impressed me most. He sees fliat it may take 
a very long time before the real spiritual growth of the people 
becomes apparent. He realizes that he himself may not live 
to see convincing expressions of it. But his quiet faith, in 
which there is no trace of resignation, is the most convincing 
individual testimony I found. His work meanwhile harks 
back to the realm of fairy story. He is even recasting some 
of his older dramas and changing them more into fairy tales 
as the expression of his quiet optimism. So while he knows 
no definite answer to any definite immediate problem, his mes- 
sage to the people is, " Be calm: do not forget that you have 
a soul which will awaken if you believe in it and give it time." 
Thomas Mann of Munich, the greatest prose writer of 
Germany, is a man of quite another stamp. He is not one 
who sees large visions, but rather a keen analyst of the circum- 
stances about him. Before the war he directed many a sharp 
criticism against the growing materialism of the country. 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 27 

During the war he fought against the democratizing influences 
that were making themselves felt in the nation and wrote an 
impassioned defense of those forces of aristocracy which he 
believed necessary for the country's growth. In these writings 
his patriotism rather dulled his usually keen perceptions. 
But this patriotism was stressed by an intimately personal 
quarrel with his brother. Heinrich Mann was drawing popular 
caricatures of the Prussian system with cutting satire that 
deeply offended the older brother, who tried too hard to 
counteract such influences by means of his essays. In my 
conversations with him, however, I found little of the admirer 
of Prussia. The demand that he particularly insists upon is 
that the power of Prussia and with it the furor poUticus, as 
he termed it, be thoroughly curbed. For only then will 
Germans turn to a real consideration of spiritual values, upon 
a regeneration of which, he insists, the welfare of the nation 
depends. He has too little of the quiet faith of Hauptmann, 
but at least he is using his influence as a leader of the nation 
to point out the sort of regeneration that goes to the very core 
of the country's life. 

It is not the poets, however, who are giving the strongest 
impetus to the process of renewing standards. After all, they 
are not the moral persuaders of the people but its expressors, 
who give clear form to that within the people which is of vital 
strength, though not yet conscious of itself. Accordingly they 
fix upon the stages that the onward march has reached, and 
by revealing the marchers to themselves, and what they have 
done by virtue of themselves, they open up the road to further 
progress. But when the people are confused or lacking in 
genuine force, the nation's poets too are helpless and their 
speech lacks clearness and a confident point of view. The 
nation itself, though it may not be clearly conscious of its 
direction, must have the power in itself to march ahead and 
must give evidences of a will to exert that power. 



28 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 



VII 

Germany is today in a sad confusion and very many of its 
university men and. others of its intellectual and moral leaders 
are badly mired in the general upset. But there is a strong 
minority of the people, mostly from the lower middle classes 
and the skilled workers, who are not only conscious that they 
must clear the paths for newer and truer progress, but have 
banded together into strong organizations for a common pur- 
pose. These are the men whom the old system had most com- 
pletely tied; whom, according to its " efficient " wisdom, it had 
made very useful and quite prosperous at the expense of 
their individuality and the prerogative of thinking for them- 
selves. The encouraging element in the revolt of these men 
is that it is not directed toward greater prosperity or even 
principally toward greater political freedom, though of course 
they have political organizations. Their most enthusiastic 
organizations are directed toward attaining fuller spiritual 
freedom and a clearer picture of themselves upon the basis 
of which such freedom can be won. I shall describe their 
efforts toward adult education in which there is no attempt 
at vocational training but simply a strong desire for a liberal 
culture, that they may know themselves more fully and better 
grasp their relations to each other and to the forces of society. 
Among preparatory school students I found a strange but in- 
teresting concerted effort to reinvestigate the principles of the 
accepted educational systems in order to make them conform 
more closely to the basic human needs of the youth. This 
effort culminated long before the war in a violent struggle 
against the system's pedagogues and against subservience of 
the home to the school. Throughout the country there are 
large and important drama leagues by which the people hope 
to make accessible to themselves the great poets of their 
past, to guard their great expressions against the corrupting 
influences now upon the country in its confusion, and also to 
encourage their living poets to help them find themselves. 



THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 29 

In liberal education and in art they seek the means by 
which new spiritual standards may be made effective. The 
confusion threatens this search with the possibility of many 
serious mistakes. The habitual affections and comforts of 
old conditions as well as the glamour of new promises threaten 
to spoil the search with vain sentimentalities. Therefore, they 
are trying to prepare themselves by a liberalizing education, 
and in the visions of their poets they are seeking correctives, 
and direction. In times of national stress the people's attitude 
toward art has often been almost a religious one. Today this 
attitude is accentuated by the feeling that in every other phase 
of their living they are under the control of their victors. 
With their art, however, they are free to do what their personal 
convictions and desires dictate. The clearest indication of the 
coming reconstruction of Germany is the faith of an important 
minority that the great dramas, as the highest artistic ex- 
pressions, provide the means to clear away the confusion by 
revealing that which is most genuine in themselves, and the 
calm determination of this minority to apply themselves to 
art with this purpose. 



IL 

EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 



WHEN a national crisis reaches the point where old 
standards are discredited and new standards are 
demanded, the universities must clearly manifest 
their worth and prove the genuineness of their liberalism. 
For if liberalism be genuine, it will have not only the insight 
and the freedom from prejudice to make thorough and minute 
analysis of accustomed habits, but it will also have a full 
appreciation of those elements in the old standards which are 
still representative of the nation's life. By such liberalism 
alone can the universities lay the foundation for a revaluation. 
In former crises, in the eighteenth century and in the move- 
ment that culminated in the Revolution of 1848, the univer- 
sities took a leading part in liberalizing thought. Today they 
are generally considered the centers of reaction, and in their 
passionate fight against the new they renounce even the free- 
dom they attained in former struggles and champion the prej- 
udices of feudal days. 

Upon examination you find that in the materializing process 
of Prussia, especially during recent decades, the universities 
were more completely caught in the machine than any other 
of the large national institutions. This machine, cleverly 
conscious of its advantage, had made the universities into great 
training schools for its public and confidential servants. The 
university degree was an unfailing recommendation to the in- 
numerable positions of trust which the system controlled in 
foreign service and in every conceivable branch of public life 

30 



EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 31 

within the empire: in administration, in judicial service, and in 
church and school. The command of the army alone, and 
a few positions of highest dignity in other branches, were pre- 
served as prerogatives of birth. If only education was con- 
sistent with the aims and purposes of the system, its quality 
was preserved and liberalism, even, was encouraged. Academic 
freedom became increasingly the freedom of a protected privi- 
leged class. With the downfall of the system and the radical 
social changes resulting from the revolution, the inevitable 
results of such education became so evident that all respect 
by the people as a whole for higher education seemed en- 
dangered. The universities had not been institutions of 
liberal culture but highly specialized vocational schools. To 
the students the revolution brought serious uncertainties and 
new disquieting competitions. The church was freed from the 
control of the state; judgeships were to be awarded upon a 
broader basis than merely a university degree; promotions 
were to be determined by merit rather than by a definite 
period of service; some positions, such as those of municipal 
administration, were to become elective, while some of the 
free professions, such as that of the physician, were ultimately 
to be drawn into civil service. Therefore conformity to the 
new state of things demanded excessive sacrifice and more un- 
selfish interest than vocational training can produce, or did 
produce in Germany. 

Accordingly the large majority of alumni, students and 
faculty angrily went into opposition against the social change. 
Because the first contact with it was painful, they have re- 
fused to recognize it or to examine it. To be sure, the economic 
changes resulting from defeat affected the university class more 
painfully than any other single group. As the mark dropped 
in value, workers' wages rose almost in proportion to its fall, 
and business reorganization and profiteering still made exist- 
ence comparatively carefree for the capitalists, both large and 
small; but professional incomes and salaries of the civil servant 
became more and more inadequate, and brought the educated 
middle class nearer to starvation than any other group in the 



32 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

country. During the war these people in their patriotic fervor 
had invested their little savings in government bonds, the in- 
come from which shrank to a mere pittance with the deprecia- 
tion of the currency. In addition this class had always been 
very proud, and had carefully manipulated its modest income 
to keep up appearances of dignity. Poverty to them, there- 
fore, meant starving in a double sense. It is only human 
that their misery kept them from facing the situation bravely 
and set them in such an angry opposition to the new conditions 
that they were in no mood even to examine them. 

This is the class that sends its sons to the universities. 
Under the old system university training was their special 
privilege. Today it cannot afford to supply its sons with the 
allowances necessary to support them while they get their 
training. But these sons inherit with their parents' poverty 
their pride, which has always made it seem undignified for 
them to work their way through college. Now they must 
work or give up their schooling; and because the latter would 
be the greater blow to their self-esteem they seek with grim 
determination the means of earning a scant living, under serious 
difficulties and with none of the cheerfulness of the American 
student. They drive cabs or clean the streets at night or sell 
second-hand books in carts at street corners. Meanwhile the 
sons of the new war rich or of the workers not only offer new 
competition, but have the money and the time to make that 
competition seem unfair, and they also crowd the universities 
beyond capacity. So everything accumulates to make the 
temper of the former educated class a menace to reconstruction. 

Unfortunately the leaders at the universities, the faculties, 
have just as little courage. They too are suffering, and there- 
fore violently attack the new order and wish that the old were 
back again. Thus they encourage the blindness of their 
students instead of being faithful to their calling and helping 
them to see. To confuse the situation even more, soon after 
the revolution the universities filled up with that large body- 
guard of the old regime which formerly would have trained 
in its own schools for commissions in the army. With the 



EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 33 

dissolution of the army under the treaty they entered the 
universities for want of knowing what else to do. These men 
are using the higher schools as centers for their resentful 
propaganda, and find a fertile field in the confused state of 
mind of the traditional student. 

During the communistic disorders throughout the empire 
in the early days of the revolution, it was the students who 
saved the country from extreme disorganizjation. Now they 
consider that the country is greatly indebted to them and 
under obligation to follow their lead. But instead of leading 
towards a new social or spiritual organization, they have be- 
come fomenters of monarchial reactions: at times of national 
elections the students join to defeat democracy, when disorder 
threatens they organize irregular bands and terrorize towns 
suspected of harboring radicals, periodically they set out upon 
Jew-baiting expeditions, and they otherwise obstruct the en- 
deavors of the official government to bring order out of chaos. 

11 

In the midst of the reactionary confusion of university life 
as a whole I found in the individual members of university 
faculties and in small groups of students the keenest insight 
into the present affairs of the country and the highest aims 
for national development. The selfishness and blindness of 
university life is at least being insistently attacked from within. 
Minority student organizations at every university are attempt- 
ing to analyse the changes that the country is under- 
going, and I found them persisting in their work in spite of 
much derision from their fellows and even some persecution. 
Faculty meetings since the revolution are said to be the scenes 
of violent combat between the reactionary majority and the 
few who, having the courage to look things squarely in the 
face, see that society has changed and that the university 
should make itself the leader of the new order. 

In the description of political parties it was pointed out 
that among the leaders of the Democratic Party are those who 



34 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

have the clearest insight into Germany's real conditions, and 
the strongest determination to lead the country in the direction 
of honest and sane recovery. Due to the respect these men 
command because of their unselfish rectitude, they exert an 
influence quite out of proportion to their party's strength. 
The strongest of these leaders are members of university 
faculties, men like Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber. 
Troeltsch, who is Professor of Philosophy at Berlin, has been 
Prussian Undersecretary of State since the revolution and has 
made his influence felt in every critical decision of the Prus- 
sian Ministry. Weber, until his death from overexertion in 
the summer of 1920, was Professor of Political Economy at 
the University of Munich and the most fearless and thorough 
champion of democratic thought in Germany. The loss of his 
leadership, just when Bavaria was beginning her sad role of 
impeding the empire's reconstruction by tactics of extreme 
reaction, was most unfortunate both for Bavaria and the 
empire as a whole. Such men attract within the universities 
a following which, though none too large, is extraordinarily 
strong and has, in spite of the reactionary attitude of the larger 
part of university circles, maintained among the people as a 
whole some respect for university training. 

in 

During the earlier days of the revolution, when the Social 
Democrats were in more complete control of government than 
they are now, there was persistent demand that the univer- 
sities be opened far more generally to the people as a whole 
and adapt their teaching more directly to the immediate 
economic needs of the people, or that, in order to save expenses, 
the various universities be consolidated into a few absolutely 
necessary ones, and purely " decorative " departments be elim- 
inated. Owing chiefly to the respect for the small group 
of liberal-minded men about Professor Troeltsch, reason 
finally prevailed in this very ugly quarrel. Konrad Haenisch, 
who became Prussian Minister for Education and the Arts 



EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 35 

after that position had been held by narrow-minded and 
dangerous fanatics, is a prominent SociaHst but a highly 
cultured, fair, and liberal-minded man who guards most care- 
fully the nation's rich intellectual resources. He has opened 
the universities to the people so far as he could without en- 
dangering their standards of scholarship. He is in the midst 
of the difficult task of devising effective means to liberalize 
teaching. But he has stopped all talk, at least within the 
government, of eliminating any of the departments of the 
universities. He is fully conscious that the universities are too 
vocational already and opposes all attempts to make them more 
so or to change them into a new kind of vocational schools for 
another class of the population. Where new departments were 
needed because of a broadening of the life of the country, he 
has created them, as, for example, the new courses in labor 
leadership at the University of Miinster. But his efforts are 
more strictly directed toward liberalizing the spirit of the 
universities, in student body and faculty. He is wisely direct- 
ing his efforts more toward the students than toward the 
teachers. I am told that his work is bearing fruit: that more 
and more are willing to open their eyes to the changes that 
have taken place and are beginning to realize that if they 
wish to enjoy the prerogatives of youth and to work toward 
leadership among their fellows, they must put themselves at 
the service of their new nation and make themselves indis- 
pensable to it. 

rv 

Meanwhile, not so much outside of as side by side with 
university education, a new popular education movement has 
sprung into life. This is a movement toward liberal culture 
by adult workers whose economic fortunes had not permitted 
them such privileges in their younger days. 

There have always been organizations for workmen's educa- 
tion in Berlin, but these were conducted by political parties, 
principally those of the Left, for purposes of party propaganda; 
or they were private undertakings, some more or less philan- 



36 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

thropic, some purely commercial, which fed their members in a 
haphazard way on popular lectures. 

When the revolution freed the workers from the spiritual 
bonds of the old regime and with the new freedom had come 
added responsibilities, the more thoughtful worker felt a keen 
desire for a broader education to enable him to approach his 
task intelligently. Within a short time scores of workmen's 
educational associations were formed in Berlin. But these 
groups were often controlled by sentimental theorists, incom- 
petent educators, or dishonest special pleaders, who created 
confusion or even misdirected an honest search for knowledge. 
The University held itself aloof from the movement of work- 
men's education as it had done from the entire revolution. 
A few teachers maintained that it was the duty of the Univer- 
sity to bring these groups together and to direct the work in 
the spirit in which the workers had conceived it. They were 
met by violent opposition from their colleagues, as though they 
were proposing to give valuable assistance to a dangerous 
enemy. But they insisted on their point and gradually won a 
small number of enthusiastic supporters. In the spring of 
191 9 the Prussian Cabinet forced consideration of the matter 
upon the universities by decreeing that at all universities in 
Prussia councils for popular education be established to give 
advice and aid to workers' educational associations. Through 
the breach thus made the interested members of the faculty 
directed their attack. Thus, though a large number of its 
members still persist in a reactionary attitude and grumble 
at the innovation as much as they dare, today the University 
officially plays an important part in the movement. 

The aim of the interested educators was to combine the 
many associations into one large effective body, to define 
its aims, and to devise methods of realizing them. In March 
1 91 9 Professor Merz of the University, and Sassenbach, a 
member of the city council, formulated the principles upon 
which should be built the organization which they called the 
Volkshochschule Gross-Berlin. They persisted in their en- 
deavors, and in the fall of 1919 the constitution was adopted 



EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 37 

by representatives of the communities of Greater Berlin and 
of all the principal labor unions. The University was then 
forced to accept the situation, especially since the organization 
had soon grown to large dimensions. By the fall of 1920 it 
had absorbed most of the smaller organizations, and was con- 
ducting 135 courses with a faculty of 118 teachers. 

The Association is supported by three institutions: the city 
communities which furnish the necessary finances, the estab- 
lished labor unions whose interest guarantees popular confi- 
dence, and the University which watches over the standards 
of the work. The University, to be sure, does not act officially 
through its Faculty, but through its Council for Popular Edu- 
cation. While this does not assure the support of all the 
members of the University, or even of a majority, it attaches 
to the work those most truly interested, and thus saves much 
friction and delay. The university faculties of Germany are 
only too justly accused of being stupidly reactionary, and so 
do not enjoy the confidence of a very large proportion of the 
people. The Prussian Cabinet therefore decreed that in addi- 
tion to representatives of the Faculty the Council should con- 
tain specialists not connected with the University, the chair- 
man and business manager of the Workmen's Educational 
Association, and six workmen's representatives. The executive 
committees of the Council is composed of an equal number of 
university men and of delegates of the Workmen's Educational 
Association. 

In all departments of the Workmen's Educational Associa- 
tion care is taken to give as much attention to interested 
popular opinion as is consistent with the standards that the 
work must attain. The parliamentary functions are vested in 
what is called the Committee. This is a very large body. About 
fifty delegates to it are elected by the different communities of 
the city in proportion to their population. All unions of a mem- 
bership of five thousand or more send delegates in proportion 
to their size, and with them are included also those political 
parties that maintain departments of cultural education, the 
expectation being that they will let the Workmen's Educational 



38 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

Association do the work for them and thus separate education 
and party propaganda, as is proper. This group of unions and 
political parties also sends about fifty delegates. The faculty 
and the classes of the Workmen's Educational Association send 
twenty delegates, ten from each group. Fin'ally, a few repre- 
sentatives of those popular educational associations not yet ab- 
sorbed, and a few prominent scientists, artists and educators are 
invited by the Executive Council to become members. 

The governing body of the Association is the Executive 
Council. This is composed of thirteen delegates chosen on the 
principle of proportional representation by the four main bodies 
of the Committee. To these are added the business manager 
of the Workmen's Educational Association, two experts in 
workmen's education, and one representative from each of the 
higher schools of the city: the University, the Institute of Tech- 
nology, and the School of Commerce. This body is chosen 
for one year only. 

The most important office is that of the business manager, 
who is the principal executive of the Association and the final 
authority in all its affairs. His personality may determine to 
a very large extent the success or failure of the undertakings, 
and great care is therefore taken in his choice. Three candi- 
dates are nominated by the University Council for Popular 
Education after conference with the Executive Council of the 
Workmen's Educational Association; from these three the 
Executive Council chooses a manager and their choice must be 
ratified by the Committee. According to the constitution, the 
business manager must resign if at any time he does not com- 
mand the confidence of the Executive Council, expressed by a 
majority vote. As long as the Association enjoys the services 
of its present manager. Professor Merz, it is certain to be led 
extremely well. He is an energetic, practical idealist, whose 
eyes are open to the situation confronting Germany and whose 
will is steadfastly directed toward a sane solution. 

The two principal bodies of the organization are so consti- 
tuted as to give the widest possible representation to the 
workers and to the population from which they come, and at 



EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 39 

the same time to include a strong corps of interested scholars 
to guard the standard of work. The Committee is intention- 
ally made a large as practicable, because it is felt that the con- 
tinuous and free discussion between scholars and workers will 
best clarify the aims of the Association, and lead to their being 
widely disseminated through the masses. 

The purpose of the undertaking, as formulated by Professor 
Merz, is " to develop spiritually independent personalities, and 
to put them into intimate relation to society." In all respects 
the institution aims to serve the general culture of the citizens, 
and it in no wise gives the vocational training of the regular 
schools. The men within this movement seem clearly con- 
scious that the higher schools have gained their vocational effi- 
ciency by the sacrifice of general cultural training, and they 
hold this condition largely responsible for the inflexible, re- 
actionary spirit at the universities today. Therefore the 
Workmen's Educational Association is in no way to be a uni- 
versity on a lower basis, but it must establish a dignified posi- 
tion of its own, and even exert upon the academic institutions 
important new influences. It wants to put its students into 
touch with the spiritual riches of humanity, to sharpen their 
power of observation and their sense of fact, and on this 
basis to develop logical thinking and a sane understanding of 
human interrelationships. 



To attain these objects the following grouping 01 courses 
has been outlined. Since the first step must be to develop a 
sense of fact and an ability to make the correct deductions in- 
herent in facts, the studies in mathematics and natural sciences 
are encouraged first. Here the facts and processes are simple, 
and simple laws are logically deduced. Also simple problems 
can be manipulated, the penetration of which is important for 
a rational view of life. Twenty-eight per cent of all the courses 
belong to this group. In the study of science practically all 
the emphasis is put upon principles. In the few courses (about 



40 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

five per cent) dealing with applied science only those scientific 
accomplishments are studied which have decisively influenced 
spiritual culture or the structure of human society, or which 
through the manner of their application have become works 
of art. 

The study of literature, music, and graphic and plastic art 
is placed next in importance. In these subjects the object 
is to learn to know the nature of artistic expression and its 
relation to life. This is sought not through informative his- 
torical study but through intimate associations with a few great 
works of art. For example, a class will devote a whole quarter 
to the study of Hamlet: first the play will be read to them by 
an eminent actor, then a detailed study will be made the basis 
for class discussions, which will incidentally uncover funda- 
mental questions of artistic expression. In the study of music, 
small orchestras are called in to assist, and much of the study 
of the other arts is carried on in the city museums. This 
group comprises twenty-two per cent of the curriculum. 

All the work is directed toward the development of a true 
social structure in which the thoughts and acts of each indi- 
vidual are led by the conviction that he is serving the best 
interests of society, and that he is conscious of his responsi- 
bility to it. The class must gain an insight into the develop- 
ment of the ideas of right and law, and of the principles of 
state and society. It must investigate how various social 
conditions have arisen, whether they are a necessary develop- 
ment, and how in the future they can be influenced in the 
interests of society. This is, of course, the study of history, 
geography, social science, and economics. Much attention is 
paid to the development of democracies, especially to the re- 
cent history of Russia and of Germany. Much time is given 
to investigating the historical roots of the new institutions in- 
augurated or proposed by the new German government, on the 
principle that the worker should make a close examination of 
those spiritual movements that seek to change economic and 
social conditions for the alleged benefit of society as a whole. 
To be sure, the country is still in the midst of the revolution 



EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 41 

and there is a consequent strong consciousness of social shift 
among the workers, so that much interest is centered about 
the study of the principles of democracy and socialism. The 
emphasis on the study of Marxism is a little out of proportion 
in an otherwise carefully balanced liberal program. But this 
is a subject constantly forced upon these men outside the 
classes; within the classes it seems to be treated dispassion- 
ately and in a thoroughly scholarly way, and may help to give 
these students the balance of liberality so much needed in 
Germany's present confusion of passions. Thirty-three per 
cent of the courses belong to this larger group. 

The crowning efforts are meant to come in intensive studies 
in philosophy and the science of religion. In these studies the 
class seeks the cultural standards peculiar to peoples or to 
whole epochs, the intimate knowledge of which should help 
each man to build the bridge which puts his own personality 
into relation with the rest of the world. Here, too, the purely 
historical study is avoided. First, introductory courses are 
offered to present the character and problems of philosophy, 
and then separate philosophical problems and separate phi- 
losophical systems are studied intensively. 

Finally, a few courses in pedagogy are presented which are 
meant to test the methods of the Association. These consist 
mainly in lectures on universal education, on reforms such as 
the " ground schools," or on the work of the Workmen's Edu- 
cational Association itself. The general plan is to arrange 
the courses so that any one subject, in so far as it is adaptable 
to the work of the Workmen's Educational Association, may be 
exhausted in two or, at most, three years. Three types of 
courses are offered in each of the groups: first, introductory 
courses which consist largely of lectures intended to give an 
idea of the scope and purpose and method of later courses; 
then the intermediate courses which are to supply the material 
for the final work; finally, the " Arbeitsgemeinschajt," or 
spiritual workshop itself. In the introductory courses the 
numbers are large, and the lecturer predominates, but per- 
sistent attempts are made to encourage discussion after each 



42 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

talk. In the more advanced work the numbers are carefully 
limited. The intermediate courses seek to have the student 
acquaint himself with the material of his branch of study and 
search for the best method of employing that material. Lectur- 
ing is therefore discouraged, and all the work is done by means 
of discussions, still directed, however, by the teacher. In the 
workshop the aim is to approach more and more the point 
where teacher and student realize that they are searching in 
common. Here the attitude of the student, both in his ob- 
servations and in his conclusions, provided only that the 
conclusions be logical, should be one of strict independence 
maintained in an atmosphere of honest intellectual rivalry and 
sincere companionship. Teacher and students should form an 
intimate commonalty of workers. 



VI 



It is the duty of the business manager to keep himself con- 
tinuously informed as to how far the organization is fulfilling 
the purpose of uniting the brain worker and hand worker in 
common efforts. He keeps in constant touch with the classes 
by arranging numerous conferences with committees from the 
classes to discuss the aims with the students and to hear 
suggestions from them. A meeting of all the classes and 
teachers within one of the city communities is held from time 
to time, iu which an effort is made to get faculty and students 
freely to exchange views. Occasionally the entire organiza- 
tion of the whole of Greater Berlin meets in convention for 
similar discussion. I was not privileged to attend such a 
convention, but Professor Merz is said to have conducted 
several with interesting results. The business manager also 
edits a general magazine to which both faculty and students 
freely contribute discussions on the work of the classes or on 
the general cultural problems disclosed to them through their 
work. Perhaps it is simply the new broom, but in the few 
numbers that have appeared thus far the student contributions 
are of unusual strength. 



EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 43 

The success of the undertaking depends most, however, upon 
the ability of the business manager to build up a body of 
teachers fitted for the work. I have attended meetings of 
the present faculty, and it was impressive to see how thoroughly 
they had absorbed the enthusiasm and the strong convictions 
of their leader. At these meetings the aims and the methods 
of teaching were reviewed, reports of experiences or observa- 
tions on the work were made, and general discussions carried 
on which were very lively but were kept strictly to the subject 
under discussion by the chairman. Professor Merz also calls 
frequent group meetings of the faculty, to which he usually 
invites experts in that particular field from outside the organi- 
zation, as well as those men whom he hopes to attach to the 
faculty. These smaller meetings are used wholly to review 
the method and standard of the work, with a view to keeping 
it on the desired level and within the purpose of the Asso- 
ciation. 

The Association has existed only since the fall of 1 919. At 
the end of the first year a faculty of 118 members were con- 
ducting 125 classes in the ten communities of Greater Berlin. 
All the teachers were doing this work in addition to their 
regular occupation. They received a compensation of only 
fifty marks, less than one dollar, an evening. As the Associa- 
tion gains in permanency it will, of course, have to have its 
own faculty. This must practically be created for the purpose, 
principally from men of younger blood who are able to adopt 
and perfect the new methods demanded by the new situation. 
Above all, they must be men of strong individuality and deeply 
conscious of their duty to society. They must not be dema- 
gogues, but sound investigators sanely interested in the edu- 
cation of the people. It will matter little to the Association 
whether such men have been teachers by profession or not, 
but it will be of immense benefit to the universities if a goodly 
number from their faculty will aid in such work and thus 
bring the old system into contact with the new. 

The classes of the Association presuppose the regular ele- 
mentary education of the German Volksschule, corresponding 



44 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

to the work of the proposed " ground schools." Partly to 
supply such preparation to those who have never had the 
opportunity to acquire it, but mainly to revive it for those 
who have long since forgotten, Professor Merz has built up a 
subsidiary organization which offers preparatory courses in 
arithmetic and language. The courses run for twelve weeks 
of two hours each, and are conducted by university students 
recommended by individual professors as especially fitted for 
work with the laboring classes. These students are the par- 
ticular hobby of Professor Merz. From their numbers he 
hopes to recruit the future permanent faculty of the Work- 
men's Educational Association, and he therefore watches care- 
fully to see which of the students best develop the spirit of 
cooperation and the power of sympathetic leadership necessary 
for the success of the venture. 

In the larger organization most courses run in four quarters 
of eight evening meetings of an hour and a half each; some 
have two-hour meetings, and a very few meet only five evenings 
in a quarter. The fee paid by the students is figured at fifty 
pfennigs an hour, making only eight marks a quarter for the 
longest course. The fee in the preparatory work is only 
four marks a course. With the mark worth a little over one 
cent this is, of course, a merely nominal fee, meant only to 
express the initial interest of the worker in the opportunities 
offered. Most of the finances must come from the city com- 
munities. Because of the present unsound financial status 
of Germany, and because of the reactionary influences that are 
insidiously manipulating the present political confusion, the 
communities are not so liberal as the success of the under- 
taking warrants, and they are therefore imposing upon the 
business management the necessity of subtle economies. These 
are simplified, however, by the enthusiastic and unselfish sup- 
port of the faculty. Meanwhile, the attendance is growing 
by such leaps and bounds that the spirit of the organization 
will slowly but surely permeate the communities whatever 
ephemeral phases they may pass through within the next few 
years. Then it will not only be possible to perfect the plans 



EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 45 

of the founders of the institution by building up a permanent 
faculty and paying them properly for their work, but the en- 
lightenment and sanity and strength developed within the many 
workers of the classes will surely lead the country in the direc- 
tion of sound reconstruction and save it many of the mad ex- 
periments of ignorance. In one essential respect, at least, the 
workers in these classes have a distinct advantage over the rest 
of the country: they are serious, patient, calm, and willing 
to open their eyes. 

VII 

No other city of Germany has developed a Workmen's Edu- 
cational Association so strong as that of Greater Berlin. In 
Munich the bitter excesses of the two attempts at a commu- 
nistic republic have created a distrust of all popular move- 
ments and put reaction in complete control. In Leipzig there 
is an organization for workmen's education which is imposing 
on paper, but actually is in the same hopeless confusion as all 
the public institutions of this most radical of the larger German 
cities. The Leipzig worker has not yet learned that to see is 
better than to dream. The new universities of Frankfurt and 
Cologne and Hamburg show a marked interest in developing 
like movements but they all seem to lack an organizer of the 
power of Professor Merz. Each of these cities is accordingly 
wasting strength in numerous smaller ventures that are com- 
peting where they should combine. At the University of 
Miinster an institute for the study of social science was 
established in the spring of 1920 for the express purpose of 
offering intensive training to labor leaders, or to students who 
hope to develop labor leadership into a sound profession. 
The founder and head of this institution, Professor Plenge, 
is a man who enjoys the highest respect in academic circles 
as in the important labor unions of Westphalia. He is work- 
ing with unusual success in a section where animosities be- 
tween labor and capital are greatest. 



Ill 

YOUTH IN REVOLT 



IN MY search through Germany for those who had the 
power to clear away some of the confusion that lay upon 
the country and to find some basic force in which the 
people had faith and which could serve as the foundation of new 
standards, I repeatedly met with the assertion that the best 
men of this type had gone into seclusion to keep away from 
the ever more confounding political squabbles and economic 
passions of the day. One of the very best of these men, I 
was often told, was a former professor of philosophy of the 
University of Heidelberg, who had been driven from office at 
the outbreak of the war and had retired to a secluded spot 
near Munich. He had published only a single drama and 
a few short articles since then, but his influence among those 
who knew him was so strong and seemingly so inspiring that I 
determined to look him up as soon as I came to Munich. He 
lived out in Percha, a little village near the Starnberger Lake, 
in a small villa furnished in simple old furniture and secluded 
in an estate of old high trees, with rugged walks along a 
winding brook: a most romantic setting for the radical I had 
expected to find. The man himself was a tall, well-set-up, 
athletic figure of middle age, with powerful but pleasant voice, 
long curly hair and kind blue eyes. Instead of a modern radi- 
cal, he appeared to be a last remnant of the old idealistic 
German students of the type of Karl Schurz, who had led the 
unsucccessful revolution of 1848. In his attitude, his views 

46 



YOUTH IN REVOLT 47 

and hopes, he proved to be just that: " the last Burschen- 
schajter," as one of his friends later described him to me. 

His idealism had made him a pessimist as to the present 
conditions of Germany, but the kind of pessimist who really 
suffers for lack of being able to fix his faith upon some definite 
and radical reserve of health within his people. The times 
had almost got his nerve, I thought. His one great concern 
was to keep alive the essential resource by which he lived: 
the ability to make a sharp distinction between appearances 
assumed by things, especially in a crisis, and what those things 
really and inwardly are. " Today," he said, " all public ex- 
pressions are merely front, and if any of the nation's seers 
claims he has any faith, he lies. He can only hope that, by 
some miracle or other, things may so clear that he can see and 
create again. At present there is nothing genuine. The best 
the poets can do is to fight hard to maintain that which is real 
and true about things as they were; but even for that they 
had best retire. Otherwise they will be contaminated by re- 
cent movements, none of which is free from the black plague 
of materialism, — a materialism that increasingly demanded its 
toll from the whole of German life, brought on the war and the 
defeat, and finally the present confusion." 

To him the war was a hopeless one from the beginning, be- 
cause the materialism that waged it was already on the verge 
of bankruptcy. Naturalism, the artistic expression of ma- 
terialism, together with its descendants, impressionism and 
cubism, was already at the point of death. In the footsteps 
of Maeterlink and Verhaeren a new spirituality was beginning 
to appear; though it too had its cults and cants, it did lead 
men away from sham and inspired them to pry into the real 
nature of a thing before they followed it. When war came, 
the men of this new movement supported it enthusiastically, 
not because they believed in those who were carrying it on, 
but because they thought it would create a crisis in which 
men would be what they are, that thus the last remains of 
materialism would be forever killed. But war did the very 
opposite. Man got to be neither spiritual nor beastlike, but 



48 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

merely a machine. So that the new movement was rudely 
shaken, and now it is necessary not only to begin anew, but to 
remove from it a most disturbing confusion. Meanwhile the 
great mass is deluding itself with cant of various sorts. 

He then spoke of one movement which before the war had 
best embodied the new spirit and which, he said, may rise 
again and carry it on: a movement by the youth of Germany 
in revolt against their teachers and parents, who were forcing 
them to deny their personal ambitions, instincts, and ideas in 
favor of the demands of the state. I had often before heard 
mention of this movement, and of its unique power and in- 
fluence on German secondary education and the workings of 
the young German mind. Upon examining it I found that it 
had almost swept the famous German system off its feet. 

n 

The movement started in 1898 in Steglitz, a rather dignified 
suburb of Berlin on the road to Potsdam. Steglitz had an 
efficient and proud Prussian population glorying in its stern 
loyalty to the demands which the rising state was pleased to 
make, and fostering an awed regard for Potsdam traditions. 
Its schools, especially its classical gymnasia, were of the most 
approved standards. Two ideals governed them in the edu- 
cation of their youth: the ideal of scholarship based upon 
Greek culture, and the ideal of service to the state. But 
the first was strictly subordinated to the second. The state 
was a jealous god who demanded love and reverence and pious 
subordination and fear. As in all German schools, but espe- 
cially in the classical gymnasia, there was close contact with the 
church. The teachers were all more or less willing assistants 
to the priests: not only did they open the session with prayer, 
but they were obliged at every opportunity to harmonize the 
mandates of the stern North German protestantism with the 
obligations due to the state. Duty ruled every phase of life 
within the school, until the scholar had completely surrendered 
his individuality to it and had thus become a model pupil 



YOUTH IN REVOLT 49 

and the joy and pride of his parents. Whatever interfered 
with this duty, this stern categorical imperative in which the 
universal law was the state guarded on one side by the church 
and on the other by scholarship, was suppressed with much 
painstaking severity and pious zeal by overzealous servants 
and with much ruthless cruelty by ambitious climbers. The 
personality of the young German boys was ground down some- 
times into very delicate, sometimes merely into cruder parts of 
the great automaton. In the small studies of their homes, 
alone or with a few kindred spirits, these little chaps would 
often turn into enthusiastic rebels and feed voraciously on the 
ideas of some radical modern philosopher or the visions of some 
rebellious poet. But even among themselves there would 
hardly be mention of political action, and once back in the 
school they immediately became again the awed and docile 
pupils. The system's school had so easy a success with this 
education that it lived in smug security and was quite un- 
prepared when chance circumstances aroused the stifled roman- 
ticism in the youth of Steglitz and fired it to revolt. 

Steglitz was a center in which the system felt comfortably 
secure. It had a loyal, sturdy, prosperous, middle class popu- 
lation. Its schools were of the very best with highly efficient 
faculties. In Steglitz lived the aged philosopher and so-called 
liberal, Frederick Paulsen, an old, kind-hearted, typically north 
German fighter, and a puritanical, evangelical scholastic. Phi- 
losophy and theology were one to him; with sincere convic- 
tion he put them both at the service of the state. His ideas 
of school reform were the proud garment in which the system 
hid in Steglitz. He was the kind of servant whom the system 
valued most, because he lent himself so well to use and abuse 
without a vestige of suspicion. But because the system felt 
so safe, it brought stronger men into the faculty, and among 
them caughtf a personality who insisted on the right of personal 
views. Gurlitt despised those of his colleagues who had sur- 
rendered unconditionally to the system; he considered them 
shallow or dangerously insincere. Moreover, he did not be- 
lieve in the eternal sanctity of a fixed set of standards and he 



50 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

frankly aired his point of view before his class. " His teaching 
was an undermining of sacred heritages; he put into the heads 
of the youth ideas which robbed them of their peace and 
upset them; he taught them to look upon the world from an 
angle which had never been taught them before, which had 
been carefully kept from them, a point of view which led them 
from the proper path and threw many a one heedlessly from a 
carefully chosen career out on to the path of independent 
thinking. He spoke of things that were taboo." ^ Gurlitt 
seemingly was an excellent though dangerous teacher. The 
system would have got rid of him if he had been merely a local 
official, but he was uncomfortably well known for his writings 
and therefore, according to the methods of the system, had to 
be treated cannily. He had to submit to a great deal of 
chicanery by patriotic colleagues. At an official inspection 
it was finally determined that he was not sufficiently master 
of his subject to be a worthy teacher. The school quietly 
accepted a good number of his reforms after he had been dis- 
missed and danger no longer threatened timid souls, but the 
pupils had been seized by a new spirit which presented a far 
more radical danger to the system. 

The quarrels of their teachers had been strongly sensed and 
keenly followed by the boys. It made them alert and sharp- 
ened the dull rebellious spirit they had timidly nourished in 
their private studies. " If teachers fight as to standards where 
they have seemed so certain, then all things may be uncertain 
and we who are young have the most reason to investigate." 
Because they had been subdued so long, they set out upon this 
search with all the excess of their newly discovered revolu- 
tionary romanticism. Above all, they felt, the search must 
be their own and not in any way directed or interpreted by 
their teachers or even by their parents. Indeed, suspicion of 
their parents was even deeper in these rebellious lads than 
suspicion of their teachers. After all, the teachers were merely 
carrying on their jobs, and their fine talk of ideals was merely 

1 Hans Blueher, Wandervogel, Charlottenburg, igig, p. 35- I have freely 
taken details from this most popular but curiously biased history. 



rOUTH IN REVOLT 51 

part of the required equipment; there was no pretense of the 
intimacy of the home. What makes the revolt so interesting 
a picture is that it gave the lads their first real taste of youth 
with all youth's craving for romantic life. 



Ill 

There never was a system that set out more ruthlessly to 
throttle the basic impulses of youth than did the German 
gymnasium of the last few decades, where the classical ideal, 
the religious ideal, even the ideal of scholarship, were carefully 
prepared to make the young man into an efficient instrument of 
the state. All free movement was carefully controlled so as 
to prepare for this main purpose. " The school had to exert 
every ounce of its powers so to train the intellect of youth 
from the start that at a certain stage of its maturity it could 
not help thinking according to the wishes of the state and 
acknowledging a high degree of probability to the ideals 
which were preached in school." - This process was so per- 
sistent and so carefully clothed in almost all the high and 
accepted ideals of the age, that only a few escaped and these 
few only after loneliness, pangs of conscience, and persecution 
by their friends. In Steglitz, however, conditions were ripe 
for a most natural reaction to overstressed order; and so it 
happened that the German youth burst forth there in the 
greatest of their spontaneous mass movements to free 
themselves from artificial bonds, an outbust of repressed in- 
herent romanticism. At bottom was a deep spirit of revolt, 
and among a few consciousness of revolt, against the system 
and its professional teachers and most of all against the parents, 
who upheld system and teachers instead of being their sons' 
friends. Where such consciousness was strong it sometimes 
violently snapped accustomed bonds and created a cynical 
and nihilistic attitude toward all culture, but there was some- 
times a sane reserve. In the early days of the movement one 
boy writes to another: " You write that love for our parents 

2 Wandervogel, p. 7S. 



52 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

is a phrase that we have outgrown. Don't you beUeve it! 
Out of love for us only do our parents take these steps that 
bring us to despair. The tragedy of it is, that they do not 
understand us and have quite a wrong conception of the char- 
acter of our inclinations. But it is terrible that we must show 
them gratitude for that which makes us so unhappy. That 
really worries me." ^ 

The leader of the movement was not a reckless spirit simply 
seeking a chance to lead his fellows on mad escapades in order 
to sow wild oats without restraint. He was rather a romantic 
rebel of the type of Karl Moor, the hero of every German 
sentimental youth whose passion is to be himself, who is con- 
scious of ideals which he thinks better than those which society 
imposes, and who devotes his life to winning respect for them in 
the face of social opposition. On Sundays the leader would 
take his friends out on an all-day hike, and at night they would 
lie about a camp fire on the open heath, airing their grievances 
and talking of things that were taboo at school; and Karl 
Fischer, or " Crazy Fischer," as the boys called him, would 
try to inspire them with his ideals. He was none too clear, 
it seems, about these ideals, and therefore could not give a 
very definite direction to the movement at the start. But he 
was very serious and very much respected by the friends he 
gathered about him. While he was a romanticist with a 
strong passion for freedom to be himself, he insisted, like 
Karl Moor, on the severest self-discipline. He was a passion- 
ate nationalist, because the foreign was unreal to him and he 
feared to come under its influence. He loved to revive old 
Germanic customs. As the most solemn celebrations of his 
organization, he reinstituted old Germanic rites around high 
bonfires on the nights of the summer and the winter solstices. 
While he was willing to discard the accustomed ideals of home 
and church and militaristic state, he insisted that the new ones 
must be found by fighting for self-possession against the in- 
ward tendency toward excesses and passions. Therefore, 
though these young lads were in revolt against their elders, 
they still commanded not a little respect. 

3 Wandervogel, p. 8i. 



rOUTII IN REVOLT 53 



rv 



At the very outset Karl Fischer was intent not upon a 
local club but upon a large national organization, independent 
of the school and founded and maintained by youth. Although 
the school forbade all such societies, Fischer managed to dis- 
cover a way out of this difficulty. He found a number of 
parents in Steglitz who believed in his sincerity and trusted 
his intentions. They formed a " Committee for Scholars," as 
they called it, which functioned as the official organization but 
did nothing except protect the boys against interference and 
supply funds when necessary. The boys enrolled their names 
with this committee in a so-called Scholarenbuch which be- 
came famous as the real record of the movement. They called 
themselves Wandervogel, birds of passage, for their most dis- 
tinctive mark was simply that they wished to get away, when 
possible, and wander out into the open heath or the hills and 
forests, so as to be by themselves. The first long hike was 
conducted by Karl Fischer in the spring of 1898 into the 
Bohemian forests, Karl Moor's favorite haunt. Later, as the 
movement spread rapidly over Germany and Austria and into 
Switzerland, short tramps were arranged for every week-end 
throughout most of the year. For the school vacations long 
hikes were organized that took the boys through Germany 
and into those parts of foreign countries, preferably into 
Russia, where German settlers abounded. The Wandervogel 
is described as " a brown, dirty fellow with a soft felt hat, 
somewhere a few green, red and gold ribbons, on his back 
a rucksack and over his shoulder a sooty pot and a guitar." 
They scorned hotels and mocked at the rain and generally 
gloried in their health and freedom. They delighted in their 
similarity to the Traveling Scholar of the Middle Ages, studied 
his habits and his language and even imitated his dialectics. 
There was no tendency, however, to imitate the habits of 
drinking and duelling of the modern German university 
student, though in the early days the members did at times 



54 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

enter an inn and mildly carouse for an evening. Mostly they 
sat about the fires with groups of boys from some distant 
locality whom they had joined on the march, and discussed 
conditions of home and school; finding that everywhere the 
same situation prevailed and the same need of change. 

On their hikes they met and fraternized with tramps, letting 
the magic of tramp slang play upon them and adopting much 
of it. They listened to their stories and their songs and made 
a record of many of them, especially of their epics. At first, 
as they marched about, and at their fires in the evening, they 
sang the songs of the Revolution of 1848 and some of the 
rebellious German student songs, but as they came into contact 
with the simple folk in the hills and forests of Germany and 
on the marshy heaths, they discovered a new store of folk 
songs which they eagerly snatched up and set to music for 
the guitar, the magic of which instrument, they claim, had 
been long lost in Germany and was rediscovered by them. 
These folk songs one of their leaders, Hans Breuer, collected 
and published under the title of Zupjgeigenhansl (Pick-fiddle 
John). It represents a real contribution to German popular 
song, and is, according to the statements of experts, the best 
collection that ever has been made. 



So these young rebels grew into a healthy lot, who reveled 
in nature and let it sharpen their senses and cleanse their 
appetites, who taught each other the loyalty of friendship and 
in a most natural way strengthened national consciousness. 
But whatever these benefits they were still rebels, and were 
slipping more and more from the control of their teachers. 
The school, true to the character of the system, did not dare 
proceed openly against the organization, though the more con- 
scientious a teacher was in his institutional duty toward youth 
the more he felt himself obliged to stamp it out in spite of all 
the good it was producing. The teachers engaged in petty 
jealous chicanery. The leaders in the Wandervogel called 



rOUTH IN REVOLT 55 

themselves Bachants from the title of the leaders of the old 
Traveling Scholars, derived from vagans or vagus and having 
no connection with a possible worship of Bacchus. But the 
zealous philologians on the faculty were studiously careless 
in examing the title, read it Bacchants, and raised a cry of 
intemperance against the boys. A fourteen-year-old boy, 
writing a composition on his vacation days, gave an enthusi- 
astic description of a hike, in the course of which he said, 
" We caroused until four in the morning." The teacher at once 
made a case of discipline of it. The examination of the boy 
proved the composition a mere piece of imagination, still the 
teacher drew a fat red line under the remark and inserted 
the exclamation: "Lie!" The poor chap was disciplined and 
forbidden to take part in further excursions. The incident also 
served as an excuse for passing a rule that henceforth over- 
night excursions should be forbidden to boys under sixteen. 
These methods, however, only knit the boys closer together 
and brought to light more clearly the essential health and clean- 
ness of the movement. Therefore the system was forced to 
proceed " cleverly." The teachers set out to praise the move- 
ment extravagantly and to patronize it. They clothed it with 
their own regular patriotic motives and attempted to send 
into its rank those upon whom they could depend to make 
it harmless. Then they solicited invitations from the boys 
to join their hikes. They hoped that, once participating, their 
standing would quickly put them into a position of command, 
and that they would soon win the boys back to the authority 
of the school. At first the boys were on their guard against 
such interference, but when the movement grew to large pro- 
portions and its organization became more complex, dissen- 
sions occurred within the ranks. The teachers with their 
authority then had a better chance to interfere, and they very 
nearly killed the spirit tliat had originally called the move- 
ment into being. 

As long as Karl Fischer, the founder and romantic idealist, 
could watch over the movement and keep its idealism and 
romanticism fresh, it ran little risk of successful interference 



56 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

by the pedagogues. Fischer was an absolute monarch in his 
way and tolerated no opposition. As the movement grew he 
tried to hold fast to his authority by assuming ever higher 
sounding titles. But by the time he was about to exchange 
the gymnasium for the university, his organization was over- 
developed and factions were splitting off. A reaction set in 
against his authority and against the extreme primitiveness of 
his romantic ideals. The richer boys wanted to enjoy ex- 
pressions of their freedom in more refined ways. Instead of 
hikes they organized wagon and automobile tours through 
Germany with elaborate hotel accomodations. Of course, they 
lost their spirit of revolt, and with it the appeal to youthful 
romanticism. At once the teachers protected this new faction; 
soon they were in control of it and were able to make larger and 
larger inroads upon Fischer's following. Fischer put up one 
last fight when he saw his followers dwindling. He called 
his friends out into the heath to the old camping ground. 
There they met at night about a huge fire and looked their 
situation in the face and decided to stand up against it. They 
renewed their oaths of allegiance to each other and went back 
confident of victory, took up the fight, and not long after were 
again in command. Because of the protection that the 
" rational factions " enjoyed, they were freer than ever from 
authority, except for that of Fischer. 

But when Fischer went to the university, he had to leave 
the direction to others. Because the Wandervogel was now a 
large organization it systematized itself and sought more help 
from teachers and was soon split again into various factions. 
When Fischer angrily interfered he was tried by a " court of 
honor," composed largely of elders, and ousted. 

VI 

On the Rhine lived an elderly gentleman named Jansen, 
who had a passion for youth and was fascinated by the spirit 
of the Wandervogel. He, too, disliked the system and believed 
he could help his nation by clarifying this revolt. He con- 



rOUTH IN REVOLT 57 

tributed liberally of his wealth, spread Wandervogel propa- 
ganda throughout the country, and helped to organize many 
branches throughout South and West Germany. But Jansen, 
being older, was more a free thinker than a primitive roman- 
ticist. He undertook to free the movement of false ideals and 
to introduce a more rational outlook. In doing so, he created 
new discords and introduced subtle differentiations that only 
gave the school a better chance to get control. 

Finally a friend of Fischer's, Hans Breuer, undertook to 
revive the original spirit of the Wandervogel and created the 
Wandervogel, Deutscher Bund, from those who were in 
sympathy with him throughout the factions. He revived the 
traditions of the Traveling Scholar, and with the guitar con- 
ducted the remarkably successful search for hidden German 
folklore. His love for nature made him an enemy of alcohol, 
and he urged abstinence upon the members of the Bund. The 
interest in nature of these " unbacchanalian Bachants " is 
said to have been very keen, and on their jolly hikes their 
interest in folklore grew and took the place of the traditional 
student songs. The Zupfgeigenhansl is their lasting con- 
tribution to German culture. These boys commanded respect 
wherever they went. 

Again the system saw its chance, and teachers and elders 
insinuated themselves. On the basis of the clean morals of the 
boys they started a movement among them to pledge them- 
selves to total abstinence and consistent democracy in their 
social organization. They systematized and spoiled and 
caused dissension. Because the boys were clean they per- 
suaded them to allow girls to join their ranks. While that 
was successful for a time, a constant emphasis on the delight- 
ful simplicity of such companionship forced a distorted con- 
sciousness of the relation of sex upon the youth, and made 
that relation artificial. They managed to induce the Bund 
to accept into its ranks the boys of lower schools, and thus 
brought in a new element which could not easily be absorbed. 
When the movement was thus weakened, the teachers took 
control, so that they were soon in command of every phase 



58 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

of the original revolt. " Ten years had passed. The 
Wandervogel movement had its beginning in a revolt against 
the pedagogues and parents in order to go its own ways. An 
enmity had broken out between youth and old age. In this 
enmity youth had developed, had built up a rich culture, and 
had found many a thing that had formerly been kept from it. 
Now it set about finding a reconciliation, — and inevitably it 
had to sink." 

VII 

When the movement was sufficiently weakened, the school 
no longer hid its purpose. It arbitrarily put in teachers as 
leaders everywhere. If it met with opposition it adopted stern 
disciplinary measures. Just before the war many a youngster 
had to suffer under its persecution. The state also had its 
say. It set about to change the enthusiasm for German 
national character back into systematic loyalty to the state, 
and the desire for outdoor life into a system of military drill. 
The Wandervogel was to be the backbone of the German Boy 
Scouts or " Young Guard," as the War Office called it. When 
this last move was made, many of the youngsters threatened 
a new revolt. In the summer of 19 14, however, General von 
der Goltz, holding a grand review of the Young Guard at 
Heidelberg, fired them to such a patriotic heat that they pub- 
licly denounced their former ideals and openly broke with those 
who still insisted on them. It was for championing this de- 
nounced minority that the Professor of Philosophy, who first 
told me this story, lost his position at the university. 

It is well worth noting, however, that the spirit of revolt, 
and a strong consciousness of the artificiality of the system, 
was extremely active in Germany before defeat brought the 
system into disrepute. To this spirit many a man is now 
pinning his faith, and is anxiously looking for the time when 
it will appear again as strong and healthy as it appeared in 
these boys in the days before the war. There are only a 
very few of these boys left. When the war broke out, they 
saw in it the hour when men would throw off artificiality and 



YOUTH IN REVOLT 59 

become themselves; or else they saw their country in distress 
and had no time or patience to analyze the system's responsi- 
bility in bringing war about. What fiery romantic youth 
would have done otherwise? They were among the first and 
the most reckless in battle, and the system, of course, did not 
have the interest nor yet the wisdom to spare them. So today 
they are gone or broken, but faith in their spirit still remains, 
and this spirit may yet become active and take a strong part 
in leading the country out of its confusion. 



IV 

THE PEOPLE OF BERLIN AND THEIR THEATRE 



IF THE Prussian state of mind, in its present confusion 
and its efforts to find a way out, can be read in any one 
institution, it is in the attitude of the people of Berlin 
to their theatre. They feel that in every practical activity, 
as well as in their rather helplessly childish but laborious 
attempts at political reorganization, they are not masters of 
themselves but subject to the endless obligations which de- 
feat has heaped upon them. Even though they are at work 
as busily as any nation is today, they go about their work 
with the staggering dullness which comes from a growing 
realization of defeat. Work is both a panacea and an opiate 
to them, but does not as yet express consciousnes of accom- 
plishment. In the theatre, however, they are free: free to 
exhibit the heavy scum of passions which the war produced, 
and the distorted growth of recent decades which the war 
has brought to light; but free also to express whatever attempts 
at clarifying are going on beneath, attempts which are being 
watched longingly by an ardent minority. In the theatre, 
they claim, they are trying to find means of expressing them- 
selves as they now are; there, they say, they are allowed to 
be themselves, and can still put into symbols and symbolic 
action the forces by which they hope to carry on. 

Both in theory and by long tradition the theatre in Germany 
is quite a different institution from the theatre in America or 
in England. It is essentially neither a commercial undertak- 
ing nor a place of entertainment, but a national forum for 

60 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 6i 

self-expression. It still shows clearly that its real beginnings 
lie not so much in the attempts of the church of the Middle 
Ages to bring its miracles vividly before the people, or in 
popular pageantry, but rather in the pulpit of the Protestant 
reformer, in protesting German philosophy, and in humanistic 
idealism. The history of the German theatre is not the story 
of the increasing success of playwright, manager and actor in 
discovering the temper of the audience and humoring it, of 
" putting a play across " in Broadway style and making large 
fortunes. That has been done in Germany, of course, as long 
as there has been a theatre. But plays of this nature are 
not allowed to appear in the subsidized public theatres or even 
in those private theatres whose managers profess artistic 
standards. They have large tinseled houses of their own 
that make their appeal frankly to those who seek mere 
entertainment. These theatres are often very prosperous 
while the others must depend on subsidies, but they do not 
command popular respect and their plays are soon forgotten. 
Throughout the German people there is unusual differenti- 
ation between a show and a drama. The drama must produce 
characters and the characters must be representative of the 
life the nation is leading or would like to lead. It must ex- 
press the basic forces of the nation, its essential common 
standards, in characters that will reveal the people to them- 
selves. So the people sit reverent and puzzled, often, before 
the drama and, in an attitude of expectation, let its visions play 
upon them. Most of the dramas that the German people now 
call great were but little suited to the stage on which they first 
appeared, and were full of unaccustomed vision to the audi- 
ence; but because they gradually and forcibly disclosed the 
people to themselves they were accepted as great national 
possessions. 

The theatres at which these dramas appear do not advertise 
in newspapers excepting for a brief announcement. Dramatic 
critics, therefore, are not press agents in any sense but serious 
students of the drama who jealously watch over its function. 
The greater freedom of the press, resulting from the revolution, 



62 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

has made them even more exacting than in the times when 
royal patronage had still to be in some measure considered; 
though it is expressive of the part that the drama plays among 
the people, that in no phase of public life has arbitrary royal 
interference been less successful than in dramatic criticism. 
Even the sneering displeasure of the Crown Prince at the first 
performance of Hauptmann's anti-militaristic Festival Play 
in 1913, which was to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of 
Napoleon's fall, succeeded in influencing hardly a single one 
of the better critics of the day. 

II 

The theatre, therefore, assumes a role of first importance in 
the struggle of the people for a new direction to their existence, 
and all the forces of this struggle come together and clash 
furiously on the stages of Berlin. The fury of this struggle 
results from the impact of four principal forces: the old 
theatres of the crown that have been turned over to the state 
and are expected to be the great popular forum for the ex- 
pressions of the new democracy; the great Berlin Drama 
League that has sprung spontaneously from the so-called 
lower classes as an expression of themselves; the theatres of 
Reinhardt, who claims to be able to unite a commercial ven- 
ture with the ideal of preserving for the people the best of 
their dramatic expressions ; and finally the more or less frankly 
commercial ventures that measure the desires of the people 
merely by box-office receipts. 

The last class naturally comprises the largest number of 
theatres, especially as the picture plays must be included. 
The latter are drawing tremendous crowds in Berlin today as 
they are everywhere. Because of the large salaries it can 
afford to pay, the moving picture industry is drawing upon 
some of the very best and most convincingly artistic actors 
of the country and on the foremost scenic artists. But the 
very best efforts of the artist are turned into sensational 
effects by money-mad managers, who, by the promise of a new 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 63 

refinement in excitement, lure the crowds to stupefying 
entertainment. 

The other entertainment theatres are an equally sorry sight, 
Here all the degrading influences of war and defeat, of profit- 
eering and senseless passions, are exploited. The reviews 
are crude, splashy, and poorly played imitations of London 
music halls, mixed with awkward attempts at French sug- 
gestiveness; the comedies are disgustingly sensuous and extrav- 
agant, and the more serious shows play to the cheapest 
war-time passions and prejudices of the audience. Excepting 
for the motion picture houses, however, all theatres of this 
class are exceedingly expensive, so that they attract only the 
very rich, or rather that large class of people who, by war-time 
speculations, have temporarily come into a large amount of 
spending money. That this is a passing crowd is as plain as 
it is fortunate, and, its money gone, its theatres will go with it. 
Today the number of these theatres is rather greater than 
before the war. Then Berlin could boast of several private 
theatres whose managers had the highest standards and, not 
being interfered with by suggestions from the court, often 
supported venturesome dramatists who were opening up im- 
portant new paths for the drama. But the refined audience 
that supported such theatres has been financially ruined by 
the war, and the managers, in order to live, are forced to 
draw the crowds of profiteers and to pamper their dull nerves 
with large doses of strong stimulants. It is interesting to note 
that in the judgment of almost every reputable critic of Berlin 
the famous Sudermann is rated as belonging to this category. 
He maintains a theatre of his own, where every season a new 
play or two of his is produced before an audience that likes 
the carefully respectable way in which he excites its nerves, 
and which remains loyal to him, as an addict is loyal to his 
stimulant, in spite of the warnings, anger and ridicule of 
critics. The composition of the Sudermann audience seemed 
very different from that at any other theatre of the city. It 
appeared to be composed of that remnant of the upper middle 
class and of officialdom that has known how to escape the 



64 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

financial ruin that the war brought to most of them. It has 
retained Sudermann to entertain it with drawing-room inde- 
cencies and comforting satires on the new order, which it 
hopes will soon pass over. 

However numerous the class frequenting the theatres of this 
general type, it is an inactive class and one of stupid spirit: 
not at all expressive of what the public ultimately will demand. 
It is simply a symptom of the post-war disease. The attempts 
to stamp it out are indicative of what may ultimately be ex- 
pected of Germany. All the remaining theatres, those of 
Reinhardt, of the state, and of the People's Drama League, 
are working with varying degrees of honesty and success at 
the process of self-expression. 



Ill 



As far as I could judge from a personal interview with 
Reinhardt, he is absolutely convinced that his theatres are 
serving only the interests of the best drama and are devoted 
to enriching the literary tastes of the people. He is, clearly 
enough, a masterly genius of the stage, rather than of the 
drama; but in his ideals he is deeply sincere. By almost all 
dramatic critics of Berlin, however, and by a large proportion 
of the public seriously interested in the drama, Reinhardt is 
passionately hated as a man professing an ideal, but in practice 
seeking merely to please in order to enrich himself. In a 
large mass meeting of Berlin workers, for example, called to 
discuss the relation of the drama to the people, I heard every 
mention of Reinhardt, even when casually made, answered by 
an angry sneer from the crowd. Neither Reinhardt nor his 
critics are altogether right. As I will try to show, Reinhardt 
has got on a curiously wrong track and is reluctant to leave 
it. The passion of his critics is largely due to the extreme 
jealousy and pride with which they guard their ideals of the 
importance of the theatre in the scheme of national life. 

Aside from a few commercial ventures such as the Theater 
des Westens, where reviews of comic operas are staged in the 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 65 

new extravagant Berlin style, but in connection with which 
Reinhardt's name never appears, he controls three theatres: 
an experimental stage, called the Kammerspiele; the old, his- 
toric Deutsches Theater, which for forty years has been the 
pathfinder of the German drama; and his new immense circus 
theatre, the Grosses Schauspielhaus. The Kammerspiele is a 
small experimental stage of the highest order, where modern 
plays of all nations are tried out, or modernized studies of 
older plays are staged, by the best actors in Reinhardt's em- 
ploy. It deserves much credit because of its broadening in- 
fluences, but it is an exclusive club for connoisseurs, so to 
speak, small and very expensive. Because its influence upon 
the public is indirect only, it is not appreciated as it deserves. 
Moreover, much of the time of the very best of Reinhardt 
players, men like Moissi and Krauss, two of the most talented 
actors of the German stage, is occupied by the Kammerspiele 
so that they can appear only occasionally before the larger 
audiences, which strongly resent such treatment. 

In Reinhardt's two remaining theatres the prices are popular, 
and a repertory is selected with the avowed intention of giving 
the people the best drama in the best possible setting. It is 
intensely interesting to observe that popular opposition to 
Reinhardt sets in at this very point. When democratic 
Germany shook off the influence of the princes from the many 
court theatres, it wanted no substitute for their authority. 
Because Reinhardt presumes to educate them from above, 
they resent his attitude and mistrust his acts. If he had 
strongly persisted in his attitude, he might have convinced 
the people, but, instead of that, he made apparent concessions 
in organization and tried to flatter their whims in the pro- 
duction of his plays. In both respects he is tragically in the 
wrong. Through the attempts to please the audience the 
artistic quality of the Deutsches Theater, even, has seriously 
suffered. With each new play produced the effects become 
more striking and sensational. Thereby his intentions become 
more obvious to the audience, and its anger turns into mock- 
ery and scoffing. 



66 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

The Grosses Schauspielhaus is an old circus, skillfully trans- 
formed into an immense theatre seating over three thousand 
people in a semicircle about a gigantic stage. This consists 
first of a large but somewhat shallow picture-frame stage of 
the ordinary sort, in front of which a spacious oblong platform 
extends out into the auditorium. Below this second stage 
runs a wide, deep pit beneath the level of the front seats. It 
is not at all a stage as we know it, but a tremendous forum. 
With the Greek drama Reinhardt has achieved remarkable 
effects upon this stage, but it is an impossible arrangement for 
a modern drama that does not depend upon spectacular 
crowds for its effect. When the crowds are not in the pit of 
the stage, the actors must so strain their voices to carry across 
the expanse between themselves and the audience that 
that struggle occupies the attention of the audience to the 
exclusion of the drama. When the crowds fill the pit their 
effect becomes so spectacular that again the real dramatic 
effect is lost. I saw an excellent performance there of Romain 
Rolland's Danton; excellent, in that each separate part was 
admirably interpreted by very able actors; but Danton's roars 
would not let you forget that you were sitting in a former 
circus, and in the last act the trial of Danton before the 
revolutionary tribunal and in the presence of the turbulent 
crowds of Paris was so magnificently exciting that Rolland's 
part in the creation was entirely lost. One feels that Rein- 
hardt has grown jealous of the popularity of the startling 
effects of the screen and has determined to compete by offer- 
ing large cinematograph effects upon this stage. The theatre 
very clearly is a failure, however honest Reinhardt's intention 
may be. But it is a costly undertaking and one he is there- 
fore reluctant to abandon. To maintain it, however, his plays 
are becoming more and more spectacular and less and less 
artistic. Reinhardt's unusual genius may find a way out. He 
claims that the problem is complicated and fascinating and 
that he has not yet been able to discover the real possibilities 
of this stage. Meanwhile the opposition is growing from day 
to day. The distrust of him may soon be so deeply rooted that 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 67 

no solution will be able to convince. In order to attract an 
audience he will then be wholly dependent upon sensational 
effects. 

In the summer of 1920 Reinhardt startled the theatre world 
of Germany by announcing that he had retired from all of his 
Berlin theatres in favor of his friend Max Hollaender. After 
the first shock the Berlin critics simply discounted this state- 
ment. Hollaender, who is a shrewd manager, they considered 
simply a dummy; and they believed that Reinhardt was trying 
to escape the increasing storm of criticism to be free, the 
better to carry on a difficult fight he was waging with the 
state authorities over the heavy amusement tax. As a matter 
of fact, Reinhardt's activity at his Berlin theatres has decreased 
but little. He is devoting much time to an important venture 
in Austria, and in the late fall of 1920 he made an elaborate 
tour with a picked ensemble through the theatres of Scandi- 
navia; but he is also putting in a good deal of hard work at 
his old theatres, much as before. 

Just before he publicly announced his retirement, but when 
the rumor of it was already widespread, I had an opportunity 
to question him in his summer castle in Salzburg, Austria. 
There he outlined his attitude toward his Berlin activities in 
idealistic terms, but clearly showed the strain he was laboring 
under because of the criticisms resulting from the direction 
in which his circus theatre was forcing him. " The Berlin 
theatres, once the leading field for the development of the 
stage and the best drama," he said, " are seriously in danger 
of decay. The Prussian passion for work and efficiency, 
powerful enough before the war, is only heightened by the 
necessities imposed upon the country by defeat. People of 
Berlin no longer have leisure to enjoy art as it must be enjoyed. 
They go to the theatre as tired business men do, with ragged 
nerves, and demanding excitement and sensation. Meanwhile 
the moving picture industry is drawing the actors away from 
the best theatres. The star system is again forcing out the 
repertory program. To produce the best plays you must 
have a company of first-rate actors, so that every part is taken 



68 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

by an artist, and you must keep them fresh by a repertory 
program which demands much devotion and understanding of 
the drama, as well as much time. The high salaries in the 
motion picture industry, especially attractive now that living 
is so high, have seriously impaired the devotion to art. When 
first-rate actors are asked to play secondary parts, they prefer 
the large salaries of the motion picture manager and thus spoil 
the chances for an artistic ensemble. Then, too, the state 
finds it necessary to levy a tax as high as thirty per cent on all 
box-office receipts instead of coming to the help of the theatre 
as it did once. This makes for very high admission fees and 
consequently a greater dependence of the director upon the 
whims of the audience. As a result the Berlin theatre is 
rapidly undergoing a change. The repertory program has 
already disappeared from a number of the best theatres and 
some annual hit is being featured in Broadway style." 

Reinhardt believes that good plays simply cannot be given 
in artistic fashion on the star plan. It certainly is a fact that 
the high standard of the German stage was achieved only 
after the star system had made way in favor of the repertory 
theatre. It is equally true that wherever the star system is 
introduced today, crude and sensational entertainment takes 
the place of the old artistic repertory. Reinhardt professes 
that he has retired to avoid devoting himself to that sort of 
thing, though the change makes it possible for the theatres to 
continue, and to hold their good actors because they are not 
required to attend rehearsals after the season's play is once 
well started, and consequently have considerable spare time 
to sell to the motion pictures. In Berlin, Reinhardt thinks 
only the large people's playhouses like the circus theatre will 
be able to maintain the old artistic program. The tremendous 
size of such a house makes it possible to sell admission at a 
low price, to get an unsophisticated audience receptive to ideal 
effects, and thus give the actor and director a proper atmos- 
phere in which to work. The large receipts also enable the 
payment of good salaries to the actors. 

However, as already indicated, Reinhardt is not acting boldly 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 69 

in accordance with his expressed conviction, but is allowing 
himself to be drawn into an endless system of compromises. 
Even the " People's Theatre/' as he delights to call his Grosses 
Schauspielhaus, is becoming more and more a spectacle, rather 
than a stage upon which the nation's best dramas are inter- 
preted for the people. So Reinhardt has lost caste today. 
But this is simply because in the national misery the ideals 
to which he was perhaps honestly aspiring have been neglected 
in favor of his practical activity as a producer. Reinhardt 
is an actor and an unusually ingenius manipulator of stage 
effects. Of the stern ideals of the German drama, and of its 
intimate relation to the inner life of the people, he has been 
an ardent student, but is not a naturally endowed interpreter. 
A growing consciousness of this accounts, no doubt, for the 
popular spirit of mistrust in which he is being shunned by 
those who are searching the visions of their poets to help clear 
away their own confusion. 

rv 

When, with the revolution, the state assumed control of the 
old court theatres of Berlin, it concentrated all its efforts at 
reform upon the theatre devoted to the spoken drama. In 
those early days of the revolution the state officials were not 
only extremely radical, but were amusing themselves and 
frantically seeking popular favor by proposing immediate 
realization of Utopian theories for popularizing the institutions 
of art. The theatre employees, both high and low, organized 
a sort of soviet of their own. Yet the changes actually effected 
were unusually sober and rational. There seems to be no 
doubt that the almost reverent attitude of Germans toward 
the drama acted as a powerful check upon over-hasty oper- 
tions, although it must be admitted that some of the Utopian 
proposals would have cost the state far too much. The most 
important change effected was to oust from the Kaiser's own 
large theatre in the heart of Berlin the old officials who had 
been subservient to his whims, and to appoint as general 
manager Dr. Leopold Jessner, who is genuinely liberal in his 



70 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

views and has also won an enviable reputation as a thorough 
scholar and as an able interpreter of the drama. In talking 
to managers of other large city theatres I found only the 
highest respect for Dr. Jessner's ability, and never once heard 
mention of his politics. Dr. Jessner was given complete con- 
trol of the theatre and of its work. He enjoys the confidence 
of the public, and the state is wise enough to see that in matters 
of artistic standards constant interference by an always chang- 
ing popular taste is detrimental to the people's good. 

The theatre was made accessible to the people by issuing 
very reasonable subscriptions to its repertory, and by turning 
over a large part of the house for several evenings of each 
week to the People's Drama League. Because of the financial 
embarrassment of the state this policy has not yet been fully 
realized. On first nights and at other gala performances sub- 
stantial prices are still being charged so as to flatter the 
profiteer into involuntary contributions to a popular institu- 
tion. Nevertheless the state pays to Dr. Jessner's work a 
subsidy of many millions marks a year. 

Dr. Jessner is the very antithesis of Reinhardt. Already 
he has swept the tinsel of the Prussian trappings off the former 
emperor's favorite stage. He believes that instead of working 
by means of mass effects in decoration, chorus, ballet and 
other such stimulants for tired nerves, the stage should seek 
its effects by presenting spiritual conflict as directly as possible, 
in a simple, convincing way. He believes that audiences 
must be educated to this kind of performance and that sim- 
plicity will most surely awaken in them a healthy reaction 
to art. His genius lies in his ability to impart to his actors a 
thorough knowledge of the peculiar character of the individual 
plays, to train them in a rich and clear diction, and by simple 
effects to reduce background and costumes to a symbolic pic- 
ture of the action. Through the extreme simplicity of the 
decorations and costumes, he forces the whole attention of 
the audience upon the spoken word. Because of the excellent 
training in clear diction which he gives his actors, he produces 
remarkable effects and succeeds in winning close attention 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 71 

from his audience. It would never occur to a Jessner audience 
during one of his successful performances to interrupt the 
play with applause before the final curtain drops. At times, 
to be sure, his expressionistic theory leads him too far and 
his symbolism appears a mere caricature; but with a reverent 
audience even an experiment that dares too much will succeed. 
Jessner's simplicity so well expresses the transition from court 
to people's theatre, that when he becomes too subtle the 
audience tends to blame itself rather than the director. The 
attitude of the old court audience that still persists in visiting 
the theatre also enhances Jessner's popularity. At the end 
of a new interpretation of an old favorite a part of the audience 
often will applaud wildly, while the smaller, older group will 
hiss and raise the cry: "We want our old stage! " That, 
too, gives the people a new sense of their freedom. 

Examination of the repertory under Jessner's direction does 
not disclose a very radical change from the days of the court 
theatre. The difference lies rather in the truer, freer spirit 
of their interpretation. The old system was wise enough to 
play the nation's classics. It was more through the distri- 
bution of emphasis that it undertook to carry on its " clever " 
education. Only in patronage of modern authors did it openly 
show favoritism. Like most German directors when they have 
arrived at the head of their profession, Jessner delights in 
winning startling effects from new interpretations of Shake- 
speare. He plays Schiller as the old court theatre never saw 
him, opening up before the people the whole fervor of 
Schiller's revolutionary ardor and letting the pathos of his ex- 
hortation to national restraint make its irresistible appeal. He 
has not yet had time to introduce his own ideas of Faust, but 
of the nineteenth century classics, particularly those of Hebbel 
and Kleist, he has given excellent productions. In accordance 
with the common German taste, his favorite modern dramatists 
are Hauptmann, Wedekind, Strindberg and Ibsen. But he 
disregards the early work of Strindberg and concentrates upon 
the quiet, thoughtful, far more spiritual later dramas; he 
drops entirely the later problem plays of Ibsen and tries to 



72 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

make hia audience intimate with the soul of Brand and of 
Peer Gynt and the inner conflict of Hakon and of Skule, 
Among the youngest dramatists he favors those who approach 
nearest his own interest in inner spiritual action. He expended 
much effort, while I had the opportunity of watching him, in 
attempts to rescue Hans Franck's Godiva, a work excellent 
in parts but uneqiial. But Germany's present confusion is 
not producing very clear dramatic expressions, and Jessner is 
at least alert enough not to be caught by the immature pro- 
ductions of the new expressionists, who turn out so-called 
" spiritual " dramas according to the latest demands of ex- 
pressionistic theory, but do not create a deeper vision of their 
life or of the life of the nation, 

Jessner also has closed his stage to those old favorites of 
the court who before its fall lived an easy life by lending their 
talents to flattering its vanities. If Jessner can prevent it, 
Sudermann will not be seen upon his stage. When he took 
control he refused to play a new drama of Sudermann's, the 
contract for which he had inherited. Sudermann, however, 
went to court and won, and Jessner had to bring out his play. 
He made an excellent performance of it and took in good 
receipts to help him in his more serious experiments, but his 
attitude clearly gave warning that Sudermann's tribe will have 
to seek another stage than the one which is devoted to giving 
the people expressions of themselves. 

The old court opera proved too expensive an institution to 
popularize: With the exception of Wagner's music drama 
the opera is by nature a decorative appendage of the court and, 
in spite of the artistic gems contained in it, its expensive 
trappings tend to estrange the people. To meet the excessive 
cost of the opera it was necessary to increase considerably the 
prices of admission. For economic reasons the gaudy settings 
of the old regime had to be retained. Arrangements are now 
being considered, however, both to modernize the opera in 
accordance with the more genuine and less pretentious taste 
of the time, and to devise means by which the people may be 
given a chance to hear the opera at popular prices. 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 73 



But Jessner, with all his reform and his deep sense of obli- 
gation to the people, is nevertheless an official of the state. 
Though it is a revolutionary state and representative of the 
will of the people, it does not yet command their faith. There- 
fore, while the people respect Jessner and sit reverently before 
his stage, they hesitate to accept his work whole-heartedly. 
Their hesitation does not mean a lack of appreciation for the 
drama but rather the very opposite. They see in the great 
dramas of their poets so intimate an expression of themselves, 
and in the crisis now upon them they are so intent on getting 
the clearest possible insight into those expressions, that they 
instinctively and often vehemently resent anything that makes 
these dramas seem more distant. That is why they turn in 
such anger against Reinhardt and why Jessner must still work 
without their full confidence. That accounts too for the 
marvelous success of the People's Drama League of Greater 
Berlin, which today maintains two large theatres built from 
the people's voluntary contributions and which, if equipment 
permitted, could quickly double its present membership 
of 120,000. 

The People's Drama League is an organization of long 
standing. Arising from the conviction, which has never wholly 
been lost sight of among the German people, that the drama is 
mainly a crystallized and solemn expression of the essential 
experience common to the people as a whole, it has had from 
the beginning the object of freeing the theatre from commer- 
cialism and paternalism, and of again emphasizing the spiritual 
attitude of the people to the drama. Its idea is not, nor was 
it ever, merely to give better performances than were pre- 
sented on many a royal stage, where toadying often went for 
more than talent; nor does it principally seek chances to per- 
form those plays which the court refused through fear of 
their revolutionary spirit; but it strives to rejuvenate and re- 
fresh the stage at the very heart of it by a thoroughly new 
reunion with the people as a whole. At the very beginning of 



74 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

the movement it was realized that the means of reaching such 
a goal must be those most natural to the growth of the stage, 
but also the most difficult: a reorganization of the audience so 
as to establish an intimate relationship between it and the 
stage. 

With the rise and victory of the new naturalism in the 
eighties of the last century a revolutionary spirit took strong 
hold of the German drama under the leadership of the great 
international quartet: Ibsen, Tolstoy, Dostoievski and Zola. 
The government exercised a ruthless censorship to keep the 
dangerous spirit off the stage; but with the founding of the 
Freie Buhne by Otto Brahm, official interference was avoided 
by those, at least, who could afford to belong to this exclusive 
society of liberal devotees to art. With the rise of the new 
drama and its intense interest in the miseries and hardships of 
the lower classes, these classes began to grow more conscious of 
themselves, to demand a greater share of life, and to organize 
for political action. What was more natural than that the 
desire should arise, on the one hand to make accessible to these 
masses the visions of their struggle, that the great dramatists 
were attempting to express, and on the other hand to win for 
the dramas the audience for which they were principally 
meant? This idea was set in motion in the spring of 1890 by 
Dr. Bruno Wille. In the summer of that year at a large mass 
meeting, attended by the interested authors and some two 
thousand workers, it was decided to form a society which 
should meet monthly at some large theatre to attend a per- 
formance of one of the new plays. The conditions of ad- 
mission were arranged so that even the poorest could be 
present. At the first performance on October 19, 1890, The 
Pillars of Society was given. Ibsen remained a decided 
favorite for a long time. The only older German plays given 
were Schiller's revolutionary dramas. The Robbers and 
Love and Intrigue, and Hebbel's Mary Magdalene. Of 
the new dramatists Hauptmann was played most, then 
Anzengruber and occasionally Halbe and Sudermann. The 
organization of the society was thoroughly democratic 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 75 

except that the director and his advisory council, who were 
chosen by the society in convention, were given absolute 
authority in artistic matters. All seats were of one price, 
about ten cents, and were distributed by lot at each per- 
formance. 

The spirit of the audience in those early days can be seen 
best from the following anecdote: ^ " In February 1891 Henrik 
Ibsen attended a performance of the Freie Volksbiihne at 
the Lessing Theatre. He sat between Bebel and Bruno Wille. 
Oskar Blumenthal, the director of the theatre, told us of the 
impression made upon him by the breathless attention and 
devotion of the audience. The play was Sudermann's Ehre. 
When the storm of applause broke over the house after the 
powerful effect of the final scene, the taciturn Ibsen, full of 
astonishment, turned to his companion and cried, " What an 
audience!" and again, "What an audience!" 

Because the movement was organized as a private society 
the police could not lawfully apply the censorship. An injunc- 
tion proceeding was, however, instituted against it in an effort 
to prove it a political society, and therefore subject to control. 
In court it established the fact that while it professed social- 
istic principles, these were not political but principles of general 
conduct, and the injunction was dropped. The old Prussian 
paternalism never did succeed in finding a way of subduing 
revolt that assumed the philosophical form of a Weltan- 
schauung. Even in its machinations it was " orderly." 

A certain amount of party politics has always exerted some 
pressure within the organization to its real detriment, even 
though at the very start the principle was insisted upon that 
political and artistic expressions should not and could not inter- 
fere with each other. The more dogmatic party Socialists 
became dissatisfied with the repertory selected by the director 
and his council, and demanded a share in the arrangements. 

1 Wesen und Weg der Berliner Volksbilhnenbewegung, Berlin, 1920, p. 6. 
This is a collection of essays on the work of the Drama League, edited by 
Julius Bab, one of the foremost dramatic critics of Berim today, to whose 
liberal help and inspiration during my recent trip to Germany I owe very 
much. 



76 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

A bitter strife ensued with the result that in October 1892 
Bruno Wille and most of the authors interested in the move- 
ment split off and formed the Neue Freie Volksbuhne, in 
which freedom of artistic standards from socialistic influence 
was insisted upon more strongly than was pleasing to the 
majority of the older society. This quarrel became very in- 
tense. The two societies felt that they fundamentally dis- 
agreed. In actual procedure the more " political " Freie 
Volksbuhne soon realized that harm must result from a mix- 
ture of motives, and that art and politics are not compatible. 
The Neue Freie Volksbuhne, on the other hand, could not 
attain its main object, the rearing of a new and fresh audience 
for the drama, without an intimate relationship with the 
people and the great labor organizations. So it happened 
that, though each society fought its fight alone for two dec- 
ades, they could finally reunite without the necessity of much 
compromise. 

The Freie Volksbiihne, under the chairmanship of the 
liberal Franz Mehring, who was widely known among the 
workers for his writings, organized along far-reaching demo- 
cratic lines. Even the director, and the advisory council for 
matters pertaining to artistic standards, were chosen by the 
society at large. The program was directed primarily toward 
making good drama accessible to the people at a very low 
admission, and developing within this new audience a thorough 
understanding and genuine appreciation of the drama. The 
society also hoped, through the pressure such an audience 
would exert, to bring about the birth of a new modern drama: 
a drama which, in a real sense, would mirror the new life that 
was coming. In 1895 it had a membership of 6,000. The 
police then saw their chance to interfere. They maintained 
that with so large a membership the society could so longer 
claim the immunity of a private organization, but would have 
to be considered a public institution, subject to censorship. 
Well knowing that with Prussian censorship in control its 
real life would be slowly but effectually throttled, the society 
fought hard in the courts to maintain its character. The Neue 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 77 

Freie Volksbuhne, with all the authority of its many well- 
known writers, came to the aid of the older society. Even a 
large part of the press helped in the fight. But the court 
decided in favor of the government. 

Rather than submit, however, the society decided to dis- 
band. The few years it had been allowed to function un- 
molested had not brought to realization the hope that many 
of the members were most anxiously and impatiently enter- 
taining. The new drama which was to be the expression of 
the inner powers of a new class failed to appear. Hauptmann's 
Before Sunrise and The Weavers had raised their expectations 
high, but neither the work of Hauptmann nor the German 
drama in general developed in such a way as to bring the goal 
nearer. Where it was best, it took another course entirely; 
where it held too closely to the course, it became propaganda, 
losing its artistic value and along with this its appeal even 
to an audience such as the society afforded. For though these 
people were very humble and untutored they were unusually 
keen to sense the difference between the real and the affected, 
and they were led by men sincere in purpose and with no trace 
of a desire to use their popularity with the people for 
political ends. 

Though disbanded and though disappointed in their prin- 
cipal hope, yet they persisted in their desire for good drama, 
especially for better and more intimate performances of the 
dramas of older days. After two years they reorganized with 
a constitution carefully prepared to make it hard for the police 
to interfere. For thirteen years the work went on unmolested. 
At first the performances were given on Sunday after- 
noons in a theatre rented for the purpose, and by a company 
of interested actors, many of whom were among the best 
in the city and willing to give their services free. As the 
society grew and had to expand, blocks of seats were rented 
for its members at the regular theatres when plays were given 
in conformity with the spirit of the society. But as the neces- 
sity of this policy grew and the control over the repertory 
decreased the society strongly desired a theatre of its own, 



78 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

a Kunstheim for the workers of Berlin. Plans for such a 
theatre were made and a goodly fund started by issuing to 
members building bonds of five dollars each, but the police 
again interfered. This new interference is hard to explain 
on any other grounds than the Prussian system's stupid 
jealousy of all education outside of its own omniscient 
tutelage. 

The members of the Freie Volksbiihne were mostly of the 
class of skilled workers and small merchants. Of the 7,000 
members in 1901 less than a thousand were unskilled workers. 
The repertory of plays from the time of reorganization to the 
outbreak of the war was one of which any theatre might be 
proud. Hauptmann and Ibsen were played most, followed in 
the order of the number of performances, by Schnitzler, Strind- 
berg, Dreyer, Goethe, Shakespeare, Hebbel, Anzengruber, 
Shaw, Schiller, Lessing, Grillparzer, Moliere, Bjornson, 
Heyjermans, Sudermann, Halbe, Bahr, Maeterlinck, Fulda, 
Nestroy, and a few scattering lesser men. Of this list Dreyer 
alone might be called a mediocre propaganda dramatist. Shaw 
was always very popular on the German stage, not so much for 
his caustic satire upon society as for his humor. German 
dramatists do not give their audience much chance to laugh. 
In the above list Bahr alone has a keen talent for comedy, 
Fulda's comedies being rather heavily sentimental. The 
German stage frankly depends for its good comedies on 
Moliere, Oscar Wilde and Shaw. 

The Prussian police, however, paid little attention to 
artistic standards or to justice. The famous, much decorated 
von Jagow was PoUzeiprdsident and was thoroughly enjoying 
his authority. In the winter of 191 o he issued a typical ukase 
imposing strict censorship upon both drama leagues, and the 
German courts upheld him with typical servility, though almost 
the whole of literary Germany vehemently and publicly pro- 
tested. This time, however, the leagues did not disband. 
They submitted to Prussian censorship and had to suffer re- 
peated stupid interference. Conscious of their strength they 
fought on in the hope that their point of view would ultimately 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 79 

triumph. Persecution again brought the two leagues together 
and thus prepared the way for the work they were to take up 
with the outbreak of the revolution. 



VI 

The story of the dissenting league, the Neue Freie 
Volksbiihnc, is one of similar struggle, but of even greater 
success. It started with a healthier foundation, freer from 
any danger of mixing politics and art. It differed from the 
older league in that it determined that matters of artistic 
standards should be left wholly to competent authorities and 
not be subject to the will of the society as a whole. It could 
thus maintain the highest standards and steer directly for the 
purpose both leagues professed supreme: that of rearing from 
among the common people a fresh, receptive, but under- 
standing audience. Among its members it counted the fore- 
most of German writers. It opened its program in November 
1892 with an excellent Sunday afternoon performance of 
Faust, at a membership admission of fifty pfennigs. It 
worried the police by giving the first performance of Haupt- 
mann's Weavers while this play was still forbidden on the 
public stage, and produced for the first time in Germany the 
equally disturbing play by Bjornson, Beyond our Powers. In 
1895 the police succeeded in stopping it for a while, the 
occasion being a proposed production of a satire on the clergy 
by Anzengruber. The censor interfered, and the trial that 
ensued was so long and costly that it exhausted the resources 
of the members and for a while the League disbanded. It 
soon reorganized, however, with a constitution assuring greater 
immunity from persecution; but it had to wage a long and 
hard up-hill fight for nearly fourteen years. 

Its alert interest in the forward march of the drama enabled 
it to seize upon the moment when a natural change in dra- 
matic expression was taking root, and it thus profited from the 
momentum of new and sound departure. The old naturalism, 
which had given birth to the league idea, was turning into 



8o GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

sensational materialism on the regular stage, and in the leagues 
was being spoiled by too strong a tendency to socialistic propa- 
ganda. The moment called for the healthy, joyous appeal 
to the senses, without which no drama ever can exist for long. 
Reinhardt, who was just beginning to capture the imagination 
of Germany, saw the need and took measures to meet it. He 
had just opened his first large theatre in Berlin, and with an 
excellent company, gathered together with his unerring instinct 
for stage talent, he played a repertory of Maeterlinck, 
Hofmannsthal and Wedekind. The Neue Freie Volksbiihne 
at once leased every Sunday and holiday matinee at Reinhardt's 
theatre. In a short time its membership increased to 10,000, 
composed, very much like that of the older league, of small 
merchants and skilled workers. When in 1905 Reinhardt took 
over the famous Deutsches Theater, the League followed him. 
Owing to his excellent performances the League grew very 
quickly, so that Reinhardt, who today is scorned by the mem- 
bers of the League and suspected of commercialism, is in a 
large measure responsible for its existence. 

In 1907 the League, with a membership of 19,000, elabo- 
rately celebrated its fifteenth anniversary by electing to 
honary membership its four most popular champions, Agnes 
Sorma, Clara Viebig, Gerhart Hauptmann and Richard Strauss. 
In 1908 it was leasing the afternoon performances in eleven 
theatres, and certain evening performances at the Deutches 
Theater. It then decided that in order to perform its work 
properly, in order to give its members the repertory it believed 
to be best, and the surroundings it thought essential, in order to 
develop the new style which it thought the spirit of the League 
would ultimately create, it must have a house of its own. The 
balance of 10,000 marks in the League's treasury was converted 
into a building fund. With each ticket was sold a building 
fund stamp of 10 pfennigs. Fifty marks' worth of stamps 
would buy a certificate which bore interest at five per cent. 
By this method and by the purchase of bonds of low denomina- 
tion, 250,000 marks were contributed by 1910. Two years 
later the membership had increased to nearly 50,000 and the 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 8i 

building fund to 650,000 marks. The police repeatedly tried to 
interfere with the growth of the society by indiscriminate 
application of the censorship, but on each occasion vehement 
protests were made throughout the country, as a result of which 
the League gained the sort of wide public respect of which 
the Prussian system has always stood in awe. It therefore 
now assumed a friendly attitude to the League. In the final 
plans for the erection of a theatre the city came to the League's 
aid. Out in the eastern part of the city several blocks of 
dilapidated and disreputable slums had just been razed. This 
site the city offered to the League at a very reasonable figure 
for the erection of its house, and also granted to it a loan of 
2,000,000 marks at a low rate of interest. 

When the success of the undertaking was thus assured and 
the road cleared for the realization of its project, the Neue 
Freie Volksbiihne approached the older league. It proposed 
that they settle their differences and unite into one large league, 
so as to proceed the more surely toward the common goal: 
the putting of art at the disposal of the people and the opening 
of their minds and senses to an even greater understanding 
and appreciation. There still threatened a bit of friction be- 
cause of socialistic dogmatism within the older league, but 
an appeal to the supremacy of art succeeded in clearing away 
all obstacles. Just before the war the union was effected and 
the building was begun. The outbreak of the war produced 
a strong spirit of chauvinism and a strong assertion of the 
authority of the state against popular movements, especially 
of a spiritual kind. But though delayed in its work the 
League still maintained its purpose. On December 20, 1914, 
the new theatre was dedicated. It had cost 4,500,000 marks, 
more than half of which was represented by bonds held by 
14,500 individual members of the League, mostly workers. 
The building is large, seating nearly two thousand, stately and 
even rich, but without a trace of pretentiousness.' It is 
equipped with the latest approved stage machinery, revolving 
stage and other mysterious apparatus, explained to my igno- 
rance by the proud head mechanician as he led me with a 



82 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

proprietary air through his back-stage labyrinth of intricate 
machines and chambers of horrors. The pride and joy in it 
evinced by even the scrubwomen is one of the greatest testi- 
monies to the spirit that has made its building possible. The 
broad, almost semi-circular auditorium is very different from 
the usual ostentatious Berlin theatre. There is not a trace of 
gilded stucco or of startling plush. All the woodwork is of 
rich and beautiful mahogany, with quiet, symbolic carvings 
sparingly distributed. It has a large floor space, a fairly 
deep balcony, two narrow galleries, and not a single box. It 
makes a comfortable, dignified auditorium, clearly showing 
that the builders were intent upon eliminating so far as 
possible all difference in seating preference, and upon giving 
each guest the comfort necessary to enjoyment. The 
entrance lobby and the refreshment halls and promenades 
on the various floors are planned in the same rich and 
dignified simplicity. The back of the theatre is furnished 
with the numerous offices and committee rooms necessary for 
carrying on the business of the League. The building with 
its dignified fagade faces a large square in the most congested 
center of humble workers' tenements. From over the six 
massive pillars of its curved front there blazes out the mes- 
sage: Die Kunst dem Volke. 

The drain of the war, however, was too hard upon the 
League. It could not pay for the upkeep of the house and 
support the heavy expenses of its own company. Reinhardt 
again had to come to the rescue. In return for a free use 
of the theatre, he proposed to play there with his company 
and turn over half the seats for each performance to the League. 
In that way the crisis was bridged. But as the revolution 
approached, the people became more intent again on taking 
up their own purpose through a repertory by the men in whom 
they placed their faith. In September 191 8 the League again 
took full control with its own company, in charge of Friedrich 
Kayssler, who is not only one of the best actors in Germany, 
but a critic of the finest discernment and high standards and 
an ardent advocate of the idea of the People's League. In the 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 83 

public announcement of his appointment, the future program 
of the League was formulated thus : 

" In his whole character Friedrich Kayssler manifests that 
respect for his fellowmen, that affection for the great, darkly 
struggling mass of the people, without which our principal 
coworker cannot be imagined. And yet, more than many who 
are in the midst of the gay clamor of the so-called ' great 
society/ he shows that proud, independent, defiant and re- 
served nobility, without which no real artist can prosper. From 
the hands of such men the People's League may hope to 
receive that which it most needs. 

" What is it that we hope and expect? Not sensation. 
We do not expect extraordinary innovations or dazzling hits. 
We expect the slow, quiet, firm and serious development of a 
company of our own, with our own purpose in view, m a broad 
repertory which will have regard for all the values of great 
dramatic literature. Neither in respect to literature nor to 
acting nor to stage reform do we want the predominance of 
a fad, however dazzling or popular it may be; but we do expect 
new adjustment and new perfecting of all the means of the 
theatre to meet the special character of the most varied prob- 
lems which the prominent poets of the past and of the future 
will set before us. We also expect that the most recent 
German drama will be fostered, but without any of the haste 
which seizes upon oddities in order to attract attention and 
get the better of a competitor. We intend to take a risk 
for the sake of young talent, and will not shun further risks 
after a first failure; but above all things, effort and time must 
be reserved to express with ever new devotion and to offer 
with greatest clarity, to the people who are desirous to enjoy 
them, the great dramatic expressions from Aeschylus to 
Hauptmann and from Shakespeare to Strindberg." - 

When I saw the League in action in the fall of 1920, its 
influence, power, and hold upon the people were definitely 
fixed. It was forced to limit its membership to 120,000 rather 
than to make new appeals. Because large numbers were 

2 Wesen und Weg der Berliner Volksbiihnenbewegung, p. 22. 



84 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

clamoring for admission, it had decided at the beginning of the 
1920 season to increase its accommodations by allowing each 
member only ten peformances a year instead of eleven. This 
made room for 20,000 new members. At nine o'clock on the 
morning of August nth the applications were received. The 
line about the theatre had formed at six, and at nine extended 
all around the building four abreast. By noon of August 13th 
the last membership ticket had been issued and the remaining 
crowds had to be refused. According to the statement of the 
officials the membership would be quickly doubled if there 
were means of finding proper accommodations. 

Though it is doing so reluctantly, the League is at present 
forced to rent large blocks of seats at thirteen theatres. Its 
relations with Jessner at the state theatre are very cordial and 
intimate. His sympathy with the movement goes to the ex- 
tent of a conviction that the future of the German stage de- 
pends principally upon the organization of people's drama 
leagues. The leaders of the league idea, however, are con- 
vinced that only in theatres of their own will their purpose 
have a chance fully to mature. They have, therefore, decided 
upon a second house. They have leased from the city for a 
term of twenty-five years the large Kroll Opera House, which, 
in anything but good condition before the war, was used as 
a hospital during that period and is now in very bad repair. 
The terms of the lease require of the Volksbuhne that it con- 
vert the old building into a dignified people's theatre and turn 
it back to the city in good repair at the expiration of the lease. 
In return, the city assumes the burden of staging there, with 
the companies of its two theatres, performances of both drama 
and opera in repertories approved by the authorities of the 
League. This will enable the society to accept an additional 
100,000 members, and also to supply its members with an 
opportunity of enjoying opera, the want of which has long 
been felt. The plans for the remodelling of this theatre are 
already complete. It will have a seating capacity of 2150 and 
will cost approximately twelve million marks. The plans for 
selling bonds for the new project had been announced only 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 85 

a few months before I visited the society, but three million 
marks had already been subscribed in denominations varying 
from twenty to one thousand marks. I was at the offices of 
the theatre on the evening of the first of the month, and saw 
these workers in what was evidently their best attire, waiting 
in long lines for a chance to make their regular payments 
toward the loan. It was a quiet, eager throng, in pleasant 
contrast to the shabby gayety that crowds about the cheaper 
movies or the race-courses of Germany today. These men, 
at least, are soberly and intently interested in becoming ac- 
quainted with those values which, once well learned, will be 
a great help in dispelling the darkness through which they 
now stumble along the paths of their new responsibilities. 

The membership of the League is, of course, not limited to 
any one class. The idea of creating a fresh audience, un- 
sophisticated and receptive to simple artistic expression, was 
paramount in the minds of the founders and has persisted. 
One of the primary purposes of the League — and it is still as 
strong as ever — was the desire to clarify the minds and 
senses of the workers; but a strong stand is taken against 
introducing any political propaganda, or fostering any so-called 
proletarian art. Because of this stand the League has bitter 
enemies who deride it as " bourgeois " propaganda. The 
Independent Socialists, for example, rather than encourage 
their members to join the League, arrange each winter, in 
Reinhardt's circus theatre, a series of " festive hours for 
workers," at which some excellent things are done but also 
much frank political, party instruction is given. The Volks- 
biihne is happily free from such a thing; the whole question 
of class struggle seems to have been set aside. Membership 
fees are very small, and theatre admission in the fall of 1920 
was only two and a half marks for matinees and four marks for 
evening performances, with the mark worth less than two cents. 
It is not cheapness, .however, that accounts for the popularity 
the League enjoys among the workers. Their interest and pride 
in it, the jealousy with which they guard its purpose, is far 
too deep for that. Besides, the motion picture theatres are 



86 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

both cheaper and infinitely more sensational. The low ad- 
missions have drawn a large number of the middle class, who 
find that they cannot afford to pay the regular prices at the 
theatres, and flock into the League, not because they believe 
in or are particularly interested in its purpose, but to satisfy 
their cravings for good drama. The coming of this class has 
made no perceptible difference in the society. Moreover the 
intermingling of the classes at the theatre, the absolute equality 
of persons guaranteed by the constitution and emphasized by 
its machinery, tends to wipe out the consciousness of class dis- 
tinctions, while the quality of the performances inspires all 
alike with the dignity of the endeavor. 

Each member is assigned ten performances a season which 
he pledges himself actually to attend. If for some good 
reason he finds it impossible, other arrangements will be made 
for him. But the society has no provision for members who 
wish simply to give their moral support and not attend the plays 
in person. On the day of his assigned performance the member 
buys his ticket of admission on presentation of his card at the 
nearest of the many substations scattered about the city. With 
this ticket he goes to the theatre and from one of the large urns 
in the entrance lobby draws his seat, or block of seats, if he 
is with his family. Where he sits or who his neighbor will be 
is merely a matter of chance. Partly to help toward paying 
the expenses of the house, partly to avoid the danger that a 
constantly assured and definitely constituted audience may 
lower the standard of acting or dull the critical sense of the 
manager, about a fourth of the seats, scattered throughout the 
house, are sold at regular box office prices, ten times that of 
the membership admission. Thus far these seats have always 
been in great demand, so that the audience is thoroughly repre- 
sentative and there is very rarely a vacant seat When blocks 
of seats are bought for members at other theatres, these also 
are selected from all over the house, except that they include 
iione of the poorest gallery seats, the discomfort of which 
makes impossible a full appreciation of the play. 

The ushers, called Ordner ("arrangers"), form an impor- 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 87 

tant group within the organization. They are members who vol- 
unteer to usher, collect the tickets, supervise the allotment of 
seats, inspect the membership cards, and do whatever other 
work is necessary in the auditorium or lobbies during a per- 
formance. Because of the interest they manifest by thus do- 
nating their time, and because of their constant contact with 
the members, they act as intermediaries between the bulk of 
the members and the officers. In order to give the members a 
better chance to express their wishes, as well as better to reach 
each member with an explanation of the purpose of the League, 
the larger organization is divided into sections of about 4000 
each. Each section meets at least once a year to discuss the 
work of the League and to choose delegates for the general 
convention, half of whom must be ushers. 

The general convention elects the business management of 
the League and half of the advisory council. It gives instruc- 
tions to the business management and passes resolutions in the 
form of recommendations to the advisory council. It also has 
the power of confirming the choice of the general director of 
the theatre on recommendation from the advisory council 
and the business management. 

The advisory council consists of nine men chosen by the 
general convention and of an equal number, experts in the 
drama and the theatre, designated by the business manage- 
ment. This body, together with the officers of the League, 
determines the repertory and has general charge of the artistic 
standards. A thorough and free discussion of these standards 
is invited and encouraged in the League at large. But the 
final determination and the responsibility for it lies with the 
advisory council, so as to safeguard the principal aim of the 
society: the education of the audience. The means to the 
realization of this aim is the introduction of a better repertory, 
presented with the greatest truth, simplicity, and artistic 
setting, in order to create the most intimate relation between 
the audience and the vision of the artist on the stage. Far 
from fostering a proletarian drama the council rather bends its 
efforts to so organizing the repertory that in the course, not of 



88 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

a, season, but of years, a synthetic picture of the drama will be 
constructed. While they profess to favor a revolutionary 
program in the present crisis, they explained to me that they 
considered any drama revolutionary, old or new, if it gives the 
people a better insight into themselves and the forces of society, 
and starts them upon a clearer onward path. At the same 
time it is decidedly the tendency of the League to encourage 
modern playwrights, both in order to give young authors 
every possible chance to see their plays produced, and to test 
before an audience which is fresh, but for that very reason 
quick to resent adulteration, attempts at crystallizing the new 
spirit. Before they are accepted, however, these modern plays 
must show real qualities of art. There was some stir among 
the members, to be sure, when the advisory council refused to 
stage the revolutionary drama by Kurt Eisner, which was 
found among the effects of this most popular martyr of the 
revolution after his assassination. The wishes of the members 
were denied because, in the estimation of the council, this 
drama contained no real artistic qualities. During the season 
of 191 9 to 1920 the modern plays presented at the League's 
theatre were: 's Jungjerngijt, by Anzengruber, who has re- 
mained a favorite with the people since the early days of 
naturalism; Kaiser's Gas, a terrible picture of society as it de- 
generates into a machine, and Die Burger von Kalais; The 
Love Potion, by Wedekind; and Predigt von Littauen, by 
Lauckner. Of the German classics Goethe's Gotz von Ber- 
lichingen, Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, Hebbel's Gyges und Sein 
Ring, and Kleist's Das Kdtchen von Heilbronn were given, as 
well as three farces by minor playwrights. Of non-German 
dramas the League presented Shakespeare's Measure for 
Measure, Calderon's The Judge of Zalamea, Bjornson's Paul 
Lange and Zora Parsberg, and of Strindberg Luther and the 
first part of Toward Damascus. This repertory is certainly 
not over-revolutionary. 

But more than the repertory, the attitude of the audience 
and the quality of the acting made this theatre distinctive as an 
institution. All the actors are professionals and several of 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 89 

them of high repute in Germany. Their close cooperation, 
and the atmosphere of religious intensity or of popular humor 
that they are able to create upon the stage, shows how 
thoroughly their leader, Friedrich Kayssler, has imbued them 
with his faith in the importance of the work. At times this 
attitude is decidedly overdone, especially when the actors are 
tugged too hard by the heavy German sentimentalism to which 
this audience seems more subject than the old more sophisti- 
cated one. 

For the programs at the theatre one of the advisory council, 
or more often Kayssler himself, prepares a short essay in order 
to acquaint the members with the author and the play, its part 
in the history of the drama, and the particular interpretation 
which the company has put upon it. Some of Kayssler's very 
best work lies in these essays. He never condescends in them, 
as though he were instructing men of lower intelligence. The 
essays are simple, scholarly talks setting forth his personal 
attitude to the author and to the play concerned. 

The work of the League is not wholly confined to the drama. 
For those who care to attend, lectures are arranged through- 
out the season, dealing especially with the history and under- 
lying principles of the drama. In addition a series of readings 
from modern lyrics, an elaborate and excellent concert program 
under the supervision of Leo Kestenberg, even expeditions 
through the museums of Berlin for a glimpse of other arts, are 
all provided. 

The most genuine enthusiasm and serious purpose is, how- 
ever, concentrated upon the drama. By applying themselves 
to it, the people seek to enter into the mystery of the relation 
of art to life. That it is one of closest intimacy is a conviction 
which has been the very life of German drama. Now that 
this new theatre has made the best of drama accessible to the 
people the conception of its relation to their lives is taking 
strong hold upon them, so that they are not only assuming a 
more intelligent attitude toward the drama but are demanding 
closer contact with it. Some of the more enthusiastic leaders 
of the movement, seeing the rapid improvement of the 



90 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

audience, were anxious to go a long step forward, and started 
an agitation for the complete communizing of the theatre. 
They proposed, somewhat on the theory of the League that 
the cities be divided into theatre communes, to which each 
person in the specified district would belong upon pledging 
himself to attend performances. The city was to requisition 
the existing playhouses and allot them to the communes. The 
repertory and its execution were to be determined by the 
delegates of the communes, and the expenses defrayed from 
the taxes of the city. Nothing expresses more clearly the 
quality of the League's work and the effect of that work 
upon the members, than the sober reaction to proposals such 
as these. They refused to run the risk of political interference 
with their purpose or of bureaucratization. They expect the 
city to express a sympathetic attitude by lightening the finan- 
cial burdens of the League, and by freeing them from the impo- 
sition of the taxes to which commercial theatres are subject; 
but they desire no political interference. They believe that 
their present organization practically solves the question of the 
socialization of the theatre. They are convinced that they will 
be able to provide additional houses without outside help as 
more and more of the people clamor for admission, and they 
are very proud of the progress they have made in eliminating 
not merely commercialism but all sense of class distinction. 



VII 



In October 1920 a long sought purpose of the General Secre- 
tary of the Volksbuhne, Dr. Nestriepke, was realized at a 
national conference of similar societies throughout Germany, 
which he had succeeded in calling under the auspices of the 
Berlin society. At this meeting the " Union of German Drama 
Leagues " was organized by representatives of some thirty 
cities of North and Central Germany. The absence of repre- 
sentatives from South Germany was felt with more grief than 
resentment since they realized the reactionary spirit which 
controlled the government of the South to the exclusion of 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 91 

successful popular movements in those places. Even in 
Southern Germany, where, in spite of official opposition, such 
movements had established themselves, the regional mistrust 
of Prussia would still make cooperation difficult, 

I attended the meetings at which the new Union was organ- 
ized and on many points I found a spirit of perfect agreement. 
In the main the Union is to be an organization for mutual 
assistance in the development of the league idea by encourag- 
ing an exchange of views between the various leagues, by ad- 
vising and aiding the members thereof, by public propaganda 
for its principles, by defending the interests of the societies 
within the Union against the courts and public officials, and by 
furthering all undertakings which aim to put art at the dis- 
posal of the people in theatres of their own. Membership 
in the Union is to be granted to those societies whose purpose 
is " to make available to their members, at the lowest possible 
uniform prices of admission and without profit, dramatic per- 
formances of high artistic standard by professional actors," 
and to organize themselves on the principle of the " self-deter- 
mination of their members." Thus far there was very little 
discussion. The term " self-determination of members " 
seemed to delight the meeting, but no one undertook to discuss 
its exact meaning. On the next point, however, there ensued 
a very lively fight. It was finally decided that all societies 
seeking admission to the Union must " acknowledge the prin- 
ciple of political and religious neutrality and under all condi- 
tions refuse to put themselves in opposition to the socialist 
movement." During the discussions arising out of this formu- 
lation, the old political quarrel which had once disrupted the 
work at Berlin and finally been successfully allayed, came to 
the fore and dangerously threatened for a while. It probably 
will grumble underneath for a long time to come and take much 
tactful handling. The delegates from the more radical centers, 
especially of Saxony, openly fought for the idea that the 
Union must be a powerful instrument for socialistic, political 
propaganda. But the men of Berlin, particularly the keen 
dramatic critic, Julius Bab, forced them into a discussion of 



92 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

the nature of artistic standards and the impossibility of a re- 
lation between art and propaganda, political or any other kind; 
and they had to retreat with what grace they could. For a 
time these radicals maintained that they should not be able 
to induce their societies to join under the circumstances; but 
the large majority replied to this threat with dignified regret 
and with a new insistence upon artistic standards. They were 
ready, however, to emphasize their principle by stating that 
they also refused to have their work serve for anti-socialistic 
propaganda. 

Wherever the Union appears it has to contend with much 
opposition from the reactionary elements. In the Rhine 
provinces and in South Germany, where reaction is in the con- 
trol of the Catholic Center, religious and political opposition 
unite to impede its work. The delegates from Cologne, for 
example, contended that they should not be able to join the 
Union if in its constitution it insisted upon political and religious 
neutrality, because the authorities of Cologne would arbitrarily 
refuse them a theatre license. They were advised to join in 
spite of this and to take up the fight, if need be, in the assur- 
ance that the Union would help them win their rights. 

This religious and reactionary opposition generally takes on 
a more subtle and interesting form than such crude political 
interference. After the establishment of the Volksbuhne a 
society was incorporated in Frankfurt on the Main by wealthy, 
ardent Catholic reactionaries, who set up in every center of the 
Rhine Provinces, where the Volksbuhne meets with success, a 
counter Bilhnenvolksbund. This offers the people a chance to 
enjoy dramatic performances under conditions similar to those 
of the Union, but rarely of as high a quality, and with the set 
purpose of educating the audience '' in the spirit of popular 
German culture and in a Christian view of life." The work 
they do is often very good, but they spoil it by their propaganda 
against all plays whose authors they can convict of socialistic 
or even of liberal leanings. In one interesting instance, in the 
City of Mijnster in Westphalia, the Volksbuhne and the 
Buhnenvolksbund both run very good theatres and even coop- 



BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 93 

erate extensively. They seem to accept the situation that the 
devoutly Catholic population cannot attend performances of 
the regular League in an unprejudiced spirit, and that the artis- 
tic reaction of this group is therefore purest in its own theatres. 

In a similar way, the more radical elements of the Berlin 
League, who are sincerely and passionately striving to know 
the meaning of the revolution, to see the nature of its new 
ethics and the new human powers which are developing 
through it, are exerting pressure upon the officials to offer 
greater opportunities for the plays of young revolutionary 
poets. Arrangements have been made to rent some small 
theatre occasionally during the season of 1921-1922 in order to 
stage such of these plays as the advisory council deems of suffi- 
cient artistic excellence. But because neither the style nor 
the subject matter of such plays is intelligible or sympathetic 
to the average member, they will not be included in the reper- 
tory and admission to them will require a special fee, so as to 
draw only those interested. 

I watched the spirit and the work of the League in Berlin 
at every possible chance. In the main the members are 
simple folk, a bit too serious perhaps; but the times are more 
serious still. While the majority of the workers are seeking 
stupefying enjoyment and excitement, these people are calmly 
intent on watching the expressions of great artists, to see if 
through these they may learn to know themselves better and to 
get hold of some stable force in the bewildering confusion. 
Moreover, many of their fellow members are of the cultured 
middle classes, who seek through the advantages of the League 
to maintain that contact with art which they can no longer find 
at the regular theatres, controlled by the profiteer with his 
money and his insistence upon cheap stimulants. So the 
workers and the cultured middle class are learning to know 
and appreciate each other to their mutual advantage. 

When I spoke of the League to my friend, the former 
Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, hidden away in the 
small village by the Starnberger Lake so as not to be caught in 
the present shams and confusions of his country, he shook 



94 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

his head at my faith in its work. " The greatest cant in 
Germany today is ' the people.' They do not go to the theatre 
for the reasons you infer. They go because formerly it was 
the privilege of their superiors, and now they take the chance 
to ' decorate ' themselves with art." But that, I know, is not 
the case with those audiences of the League which I watched 
at Berlin. There was no affectation in their attitude, but calm 
concentration upon a new purpose. Their influence will not 
appear at once; but I feel convinced that with the members 
of the Workmen's Educational Association they will do more 
than any other group to bring the country gradually back to 
health. 



V 

WEIMAR 



WEIMAR is a natural objective for a student of 
literature who travels through Germany today in 
search of some indication of a spirit within the 
people which may lead them out of their turmoil. Weimar 
is but a very small city. The inhabitants are dulled, both 
because their trade has too long been simply to cater to visit- 
ing sight-seers, and because the artificial political organization 
of a petty but proud principality has weighed too heavily upon 
them, especially in recent decades. It is, nevertheless, the 
center from which, only a little over a century ago, the power 
of German liberal idealism so radiated over all of Germany 
that its force still persists in spite of every obstacle. 

The men of Weimar, to be sure, were not the pioneers who 
first fixed upon, clarified, and developed the idealism of 
eighteenth-century Germany. That credit belongs above all 
others to Kant. Kant possessed the keen critical sense with 
which to clear of inconsistencies and irrelevancies the path 
toward idealism. He had the lofty ethical fervor which en- 
abled him to sense accurately the native German force and 
thus give his idealism a real foundation. Still he could not 
make this idealism the ruling power within the life of the 
people, for his metaphysics, his visions, and his language were 
not the kind to establish contact with their thoughts and long- 
ings. Before the principles of Kant could enter actively into 
German life, they had to be expounded by a great teacher who, 
from a point of view intimately related to the people, could 

95 



96 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

explain the nature of these principles in terms that everybody 
could understand. That teacher was Herder. 

Weimar was the home not only of Herder but also of 
Herder's greatest pupils, Goethe and Schiller. These two com- 
pleted the expression of the idealism of Kant as taught by 
Herder. Goethe fused the idealism with the basic forces in 
the nation's life in visions so clear that they became a mirror 
in which Germany need only look to be reminded of itself. 
Schiller took the deeper longings and hopes of the people and 
clarified and strengthened them by means of this same idealism, 
and then, in his great popular dramas, gave back these native 
impulses renewed and full of life. Thus to the people Kant 
is a very great but very distant metaphysician, Herder is a 
teacher to be highly revered, but Goethe and Schiller are the 
poets and seers of that which is highest and most fundamental. 
They are the ideals of the people personified. They are the 
people's national legend. To the people Weimar and Goethe 
and Schiller are one. Thus Weimar itself has become the 
legend containing for the people that which is eternal in them- 
selves; this legend they intimately search for guidance when- 
ever the conviction is forced upon them that their life needs a 
real renewal. 

Never since Weimar's classical days has Germany seen such 
a dangerous time as it is living through today. Even as it 
gropes back to Weimar, its touch is not steady or altogether 
honest. Germany's confusion is so dark that in its greatest 
distress there are many who are even willing to use its clearest 
force to further selfish ends. 

When the National Constituent Assembly sought a place in 
which to meet for the framing of the republic's constitution, it 
fixed upon Weimar, ostensibly because the new republic had 
been born in a democratic spirit based upon the Weimar ideals 
of freedom and humanity, and because the new laws were to be 
an expression of that idealism. The German revolution, how- 
ever, though it will surely lead the country back to Weimar as 
it clears, was simply a revolt against unbearable conditions; 
the natural reaction to an unsuccessful war which a powerful 



WEIMAR 97 

propaganda had made appear the people's war and which the 
people had to wage under a general draft. The large demo- 
cratic vote in the elections to the Constituent Assembly was 
not so much an expression of conviction as a desire to mollify 
the victors by a show of change of heart. Weimar was chosen 
for the meeting because police protection could easily be 
arranged there against the threatened interference from 
reactionaries and radicals, and because Weimar might favor- 
ably impress the statesmen of the Entente. This was ex- 
plained to me by delegates to the Convention who were most 
sincere in their hope that the real Weimar might revive and 
who were bitterly disappointed by the spirit that took hold of 
the nation when the victors were not easily misled into a full 
acceptance of the German change of heart. Yet such men as 
these delegates retain their faith in the ultimate power of 
Weimar to heal and gradually to lead the nation to a genuine 
recovery, for they know that this force is fundamental in the 
nation's life and that once set in motion it will slowly but 
surely work upon the national mind. So the choice of Weimar 
was partly for the effect it might have upon the outside world, 
yet it was also a direct appeal to the true liberalizing idealism 
of Weimar against the distortions of it by the old system, and 
therefore it set this idealism freer than it had been. Now the 
question is how to make it still freer. In the larger cities the 
people's drama leagues and some of the better new city theatres 
are doing important work in fostering Weimar's spirit. But 
if the Weimar legend, with the mysterious power that a 
national legend has in the shaping of lives, is to take real hold 
upon the people, Weimar itself must be intimately connected 
with the work in order to stimulate the people's memory 



II 

At the time when the Constituent Assembly met in Weimar 
the general director of Goethe's theatre was the neo-classical 
dramatist Ernst Hardt. He is thoroughly alive to the oppor- 
tunity and, as he sees it, the obligation confronting him: to 



98 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

restore the Weimar theatre to the position Goethe and Schiller 
had once conceived for it as the national stage on which to 
keep the expressions of the national art and ideals before the 
eyes and minds of the people of the whole country. In these 
plans Goethe was clearly conscious of setting Weimar in 
opposition to the ideas of the new national center in Berlin, 
whose political and material ambitions he mistrusted; and 
Schiller repeatedly refused a call to the theatre at Berlin be- 
cause he feared that in the Prussian capital the idealistic 
motives would soon be buried under theatrical pomp. But 
within the last half century, the Weimar theatre had degener- 
ated simply into a royal stage whose directors were subservient 
to the whims of the ruling prince under the dominance of 
Prussian politics. The revolution swept away the many petty 
princes of Thuringia and welded it into a single republic, 
again conscious of the cultural gifts this little romantic patch 
of German woods had bestowed upon the country in former 
crises. It put Ernst Hardt in charge of the theatre at Weimar, 
not only because he is a dramatist of note and had shown him- 
self a fearless liberal in times of stress, but because among the 
modern poets he is one of the best authorities on German 
classical literature, and, in the estimate of men like the Goethe 
expert, George Witkowski of Leipzig, one of the very best pro- 
ducers and interpreters of the dramas of Goethe and Schiller. 
In order that his intentions might immediately be estab- 
lished before the country, Ernst Hardt sought and received 
from the provisional government at Berlin permission to des- 
ignate the Weimar theatre " The German National Theatre." 
Thus he tried to direct the eyes of the nation once again upon 
the need for a rebirth of its culture in a return to Weimar. On 
the evening of the 6th of February, 1919, the first day of the 
deliberations of the Constituent Assembly, the delegates met 
for a performance at the theatre. As a curtain raiser was given 
a prologue. The Fountain, composed by Hardt himself. It is a 
simple picture of Weimar longing for the return of its people. 
In a corner of the Weimar park between a bust of Goethe and a 
similar one of Schiller bubbles a fountain. On the base of 



WEIMAR 99 

the fountain a youth in Greek garments lies asleep. For a 
hundred years he has been guarding the fountain and has 
helped many an eager pilgrim to a refreshing drink. But 
wearied by the protracted loneliness of many recent years, he 
has fallen asleep. Heavy, shuffling steps arouse him from 
his slumbers and there approach a haggard woman, dressed 
in deep mourning and exhausted with grief, and her only re- 
maining son, a wounded soldier, insane with anger at himself 
and every other man and thing, capable only of degraded 
appetites and lusts. But the touch of the youth quiets the 
ravings, and he leads his soldier-brother to the fountain to 
drink; then he speaks in simple admonition: 

" Come, let me take your sick hand. 

My brother! Do not rave and grieve yourself; 

Raise up your head and think upon your worth. 

I've guarded here these hundred years and more 

This fountain. O my brother, if you had 

But dipped from it these fatal hundred years 

You would not stand before me as you are. 

For here there rises clear from virgin soil 

The clearest fount of human hopefulness 

Which other people ever praised in you. 

Bend down and drink, for here you can grow sound. 

Come, mother, leave your son here at the fount 

To look upon himself in solitude. 

Upon his head unseen there gently rest 

The greatest German poets' loving hands 

And bless him as he bravely looks afresh 

Upon his life. Come now, and I will dip 

This cloth far down into the fount and cool, 

While he collects himself, your eyes for you; 

Your poor, dear eyes, which tears have bitten sore." 

Then followed a performance of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, on 
which Hardt had worked a long time to make it express as 
clearly as possible Schiller's vision of that spirit of freedom 



lOO GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

to which the German people should aspire. On the 23rd of 
March, 1848, a performance of Tell at the Berlin Opera had 
fired the people to a deeper understanding of that revolution 
and had helped to crystallize the popular purpose. Hardt 
may have expected a similar effect, but while the reception of 
the play was hearty, he nevertheless feels that it was not spon- 
taneous nor wholly genuine. It taught him, so he says, that the 
spirit of Weimar is as yet none too well received in Germany. 
But for that very reason there is all the greater need of express- 
ing it more clearly and more frequently. Soon after this per- 
formance Hardt appeared before the Convention to plead with 
it for moral and financial support of his undertaking. Instead 
of granting him the 500,000 marks a year which he requested 
as a subsidy from the national government, it gave 100,000 
marks for a period of three years, together with a goodly sup- 
ply of praise. However, the new Republic of Thuringia has 
greater faith in the German National Theatre and grants a 
yearly subsidy of 1,500,000 marks. In the season of 1919- 
1920 the box office receipts amounted to 1,700,000 marks. 
But the purchasing value of a mark is not very high in 
Germany today and the cost of running a theatre has increased 
greatly. Hardt found himself at the end of the year with a 
deficit of 1,500,000 marks. So far he has been able in one 
way or another to cover this deficit. He feels he must persist 
until the country realizes that it cannot build up a new national 
life before it clarifies the fundamental national culture con- 
tained in its heritage at Weimar. The difficulties of his task 
have made him perhaps more pessimistic than the conditions 
of the country warrant; yet his views are not much darker 
than those of many another German who has a real desire for 
the return of the best German culture. 

Hardt understands very clearly how the Prussian system 
was more and more impoverishing German spiritual life by 
building up its own complicated machine, how it forced the 
people to concentrate their efforts upon keeping this machine 
in a condition of highest efficiency, and how at last the people 
neglected the spiritual things and built up standards based on 



WEIMAR loi 

material benefits alone. However, there was always some 
leisure as well as some protesting idealism which could turn 
its energies upon the finer spiritual culture of the nation and 
keep it from being wholly lost for want of attention. But he 
thinks that, as the extent of the defeat becomes more evident, 
the spiritual reserves of the country will become more im- 
poverished. And because the nation must put forth every 
ounce of strength in work to pay its bills, its leisure will be lost 
and its physical powers will be taxed to such an extent that 
it will have no reserve to expend upon the fostering of the 
finer values of life, and its idealists will become mere pessi- 
mists. Yet Hardt and most of the finer grained men with 
whom I spoke know that the regeneration of Germany can- 
not be effected merely or even principally through work, for 
such a regeneration would mean that the purely materialistic 
standards of pre-war days would ultimately rise again; they 
know that above all else the spiritual standards must be 
renewed. 

In the conditions that exist or threaten today Hardt sees a 
dangerous analogy to the days following the Thirty Years' 
War. In those days Germany became so impoverished and 
spiritually so exhausted that its cultural powers almost dis- 
appeared and even its language lost the power of expression. 
For a century the art of the country consisted merely of the 
slavish importation and awkward imitation of foreign art to 
the neglect of any vivid recollection of its own culture. Only 
when it freed itself from imitation and turned again to its own 
culture, rousing it from the stupor into which it had fallen 
through exhaustion, and strengthening it with that foreign art, 
Greek and English, which was in essence most related to it, 
did German art begin to live again. 

It is that sort of extreme exhaustion which Hardt would 
like to spare the country in its present crisis. He realizes the 
importance of the movements that the workers have begun 
in order to know and foster the cultural values that the older 
cultured classes in their misery and confusion are neglecting. 
At the same time he firmly and, I believe, rightly insists that 



I02 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

no such movement can succeed unless the Weimar legend is 
kept as pure and strong as possible, for that legend contains 
the greater part of the country's most intimate and native 
spiritual treasures. Without the help of the Weimar legend 
the country would be like a man who, because of a recent un- 
fortunate experience, undertook to wipe out the memory of 
his entire life and start anew. Innumerable surprises and 
distorted judgments would make his progress very difficult, 
and he would be without a clear direction until he learned to 
know himself on the basis of the health that was in him. To 
the German people the Weimar legend represents this basis; 
at least, attention to it releases within the mind of the people a 
search for fundamental native ideals, whatever their expression 
may be from time to time. With this in mind Hardt is going 
about his work at the German National Theatre at Weimar. 
He not only wants to give as good productions of the German 
classics as his resources will allow, but in the atmosphere of 
Weimar and its standards he wants to play especially the 
newest dramas as a test of their relation to the essentials of 
German life contained in the Weimar heritage. 



in 

Hardt's task is difficult. He has to labor against the greatest 
German weakness, extreme sentimentality, which in the con- 
fusion of the country tends more than ever to vitiate all serious 
endeavors. When I was in Weimar in the autumn of 1920 
the city was again filled with German travelers who had 
ostensibly come on the regular pilgrimage to their national 
Mecca. I met them ever3rwhere, in the homes of Goethe, 
Schiller, Herder and Liszt^ and in the little garden house of 
Goethe, and on the paths through the delightful park of 
Tiefurt. I listened to their remarks and watched them closely 
to see whether their disaster had brought them nearer to the 
spirit of the men whose former homes and haunts they had 
sought out. But they were the stupidly sentimental museum 
crowds of former years, whose loud affectations showed their 



WEIMAR 103 

lack of real contact with the spirit that gives these places 
meaning. And yet Weimar was the one city I found in 
Germany that was still making a free display of the new re- 
public's colors, black, red, and gold, as though to symbolize 
the service of its spirit to the new state. But the crowds 
seemed worried by them, while many openly mocked them. 
I visited the palace of the former princes of Weimar, one of the 
most inspiring in Germany, furnished in a taste that bears 
witness to the influence that the intellectual giants of 
Germany once had upon the princes of this little realm. As 
the guide led us from room to room he explained, to the 
visible horror of the crowd, that during the Constituent 
Assembly the people's delegates had been lodged there. But 
when he went on to say that all the furniture had been care- 
fully stored away and cots put in instead, they were somewhat 
relieved. It is a strangely sentimental crowd that will stand 
in pious admiration in the bedchamber of a former prince, be- 
coming indignant at what seems to them desecration of that 
chamber by their delegates, and yet will react immediately to 
an order for a general strike if some such prince should try 
to oust these delegates from their appointed work. It is just 
such sentimentalism that makes the work of Hardt so difficult. 
But to be effective Hardt must seek for the broadest possible 
hearing. His work is not the kind that can afford to make its 
appeal principally to the great drama leagues throughout the 
country or to the more liberal of the new city and state theatres, 
however important it may be for them. He has the thankless 
task of trying to insist upon the clarification of a national 
legend within the whole people. He must clear it as well of 
the sentimentalizing of the exhausted masses of the middle 
class, who think they guard it in weeping for it, as of the dis- 
tortions of it which disappointed reactionaries, who still con- 
sider themselves its sole legitimate interpreters, would still like 
to effect. He must again bring it to the attention of that 
large mass of people which, as the result of the passions of 
war, has lost all sense of things except as these help toward the 
crudest physical benefits. Even by the best elements of the 



104 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

people's drama leagues his work will not be greatly appreci- 
ated, though its actual effect may be far-reaching. It will 
always seem to this class an attempt to educate them from 
above, and therefore far less important than the work which 
they feel they are initiating themselves. There are indications 
that they look with some suspicion upon the Weimar venture 
for that reason. They are not yet liberal enough to distinguish 
between that which is inherently theirs and that which they 
call theirs because they have a visible control of it. 

Hardt has also to contend with many physical difficulties. 
The expense budget rose to alarming figures because of the 
decline of the mark and the enormous increase in the cost of 
living, and because of the ease with which the employees of 
the theatre, from star to scrub-woman, together with all other 
German workers, won their demands for high salaries. For- 
merly the ruling prince not only paid liberal subsidies to 
the theatre from his private purse, but also succeeded in satis- 
fying the actors with ridiculous salaries by flattering them with 
his favor and his decorations. One of the less attractive 
results of Germany's turn to democracy is that the power of 
money has supplanted the power of royal favor. And yet 
when the German National Theatre was in serious financial 
straits after the revolution, the employees expressed their faith 
in its work by limiting their demands to the minimum on which 
they could subsist. In the matter of properties Hardt must 
resort to interesting subtleties of economy. Because of the 
prohibitive price of canvas his scene painter must content him- 
self with paper. To lessen further the cost of equipment 
Hardt compresses the stage to the smallest possible dimensions 
that the action will bear, and seeks to attain his scenic effects 
through simple, suggestive arrangements, without being a 
devotee of the extreme expressionistic stage reform. While 
his simplicity does often attain remarkable effects and be- 
comes strikingly expressive, it is purely a result of necessity; 
but for that very reason it is in closer contact with the spirit 
of the times. The property room of the National Theatre is 
a rich storehouse of properties accumulated since the days of 



WEIMAR 105 

Goethe's management, but, because of the additional expense 
involved, many of them cannot be used today. While these 
enforced economies demand a keen inventiveness and much 
time, they are leading to a natural reform of the stage in close 
relation to the best of the new democratic spirit, and in pleas- 
ant contrast to the former tinsel. 

In another kind of enforced thrift Hardt is less fortunate. 
To bring his work before the country with proper force he 
should have at his theatre some of the best talent in the coun- 
try. But lack of money and insufficient faith in the importance 
of his undertaking make that impossible. He must therefore 
content himself with the company which he inherited from the 
old regime. I saw a performance of Goethe's Faust on which 
Hardt had expended much effort. The quiet simplicity of his 
arrangement of the scenes served to project the action clearly. 
The distribution of emphasis among the various parts showed 
the producer's deep understanding of the play. But Faust 
himself was played by an old favorite of the former court who 
declaimed his part with the bombastic sentimentalism that he 
had hurled across that stage for twenty-five years. He did 
not have the least conception of the character he was repre- 
senting. Gretchen also was was not of the best, but she showed 
evidences of being susceptible to training. The principal 
actors are evidently not good enough to do Hardt's work as it 
must be done, but he is not yet in a position to make the 
necessary changes. 

IV 

Meanwhile Hardt is advancing his idea by sheer persistency 
and hard work. In the spring of 1921 he finally succeeded, 
after two years of urging, in inducing the city of Jena to give 
up the idea of supporting a theatre of its own and to entrust 
the Weimar theatre with supplying it with dramatic produc- 
tions. The greatest benefit in that step lies in the new 
audiences he thus acquires, composed of the students of the 
University of Jena and the workers of one of the largest 
factories of Germany. The new Republic of Thuringia cele- 



io6 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

brated at Weimar from the 19th to the 25th of June, 1921, a 
festive week devoted to the drama. The whole of July was 
given over to " festival plays " for the German Schiller League. 
During that month high school students from all parts of 
Germany made expeditions to Weimar to visit the national 
shrines and to attend performances at the German National 
Theatre of Goethe's Tasso, Schiller's Love and Intrigue and 
Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm. In spite of difficulties, Hardt 
is thus succeeding in helping to keep alive the Weimar legend. 
Hardt is very intent upon his purpose. When I interviewed 
him to hear the details of his undertakings, he began immedi- 
ately to outline a bold and interesting scheme long in his mind. 
He questioned me at length on the attitude of German-Ameri- 
cans to the new German republic. I could not help thinking 
how much almost all of them were doing to help relieve the 
physical sufferings of such relatives and friends as they knew 
to be in need, and how little they know or care about the fight 
for a new spirit which is slowly and laboriously being waged 
in Germany. I gave him what little encouragement I could. 
" If there are any who were honest in their fight against old 
Germany," he said, " then they ought now to help us keep 
the better spirit from being lost in the confusions of the day." 
Their minds and their knowledge of Germany, he thought, 
ought to be clear enough to see the need of emphasis on the 
Weimar legend in the struggle for regeneration, and they ought 
to come liberally to its support. He plans at an opportune 
time to address to them in behalf of the Republic of Thuringia, 
a request to establish an endowment for the German National 
Theatre at Weimar as an expression of their faith in the new 
democracy as opposed to the old system which they helped 
to defeat. Personally I should like very much to see Hardt 
succeed, for such support would make the German- Americans 
themselves more sane and would free them of the sentimental- 
ities resulting from war's vexations. But he will have a hard 
time of it. Like other courageous and honest idealists in 
Germany today, he will have to grit his teeth and hold to his 
purpose until more favorable conditions prevaiL 



WEIMAR 107 



A visit to Leipzig on leaving Weimar convinced me of the 
importance of Hardt's work more than anything he had said 
or shown. Leipzig is a rich commercial city and always has 
had good theatres, which it maintained from public moneys. 
Today it is supposed to be one of the most radical cities in the 
country, with the people strongly in control; yet its theatres 
are doing less for the people than those of any other large city 
I visited. The opera keeps up its standard as of old, but 
prices are so high that only the rich can go. The theatre for 
the drama is also too expensive for people of average income, 
and its repertory is confused and rather sensational. Since 
the revolution the city has acquired a third theatre, which 
produces new comic operas of questionable merit, and which 
has adjoining wine restaurants and dancing halls. 

The moderate Socialists have organized a drama league in 
Leipzig which boasted of a membership of 25,000 and played 
in a heavily mortgaged house of its own. But the repertory 
was stupid and extreme. The management seemed to be in 
the hands of a typical " parlor bolshevist," who appeared to be 
devoted to all the latest " isms " and anxious to educate the 
people through " revolutionary art." I saw a play there by an 
obscure Russian ; it was called The Secret Corners of the Soul, 
and the principal characters were " Reason " " Feeling " and 
" The Immortal Subconsciousness." The manager flattered 
himself that he thoroughly understood it all, but I doubt 
whether the actors knew what they were saying. The audience, 
simple working folk, seemed dumbfounded, bored and dis- 
gusted, but lacked the courage to admit that this was not food 
that they were willing or able to digest. 

Another theatre of very much better quality was first united 
with the drama league, but differences arose and it is now 
trying to organize a dramatic society of its own in order to 
insure a steady patronage. In spite of its better program it 
is not likely to maintain itself without help from the city. 



io8 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

The city, however, is jealous of such ventures and instead 
of aiding quarrels with them. 

Dissent and strife seem to have hold of this most radical 
people's city, even in its relation to art. Closer contact with 
the Weimar spirit and a refreshing in their minds of the 
Weimar legend might help it to a steadier course. 



VI 

THE MIND OF BAVARIA 



THE GERMAN Revolution, which seems to have been 
a greater surprise to the Germans themselves than to 
the other nations who were anxiously awaiting its 
approach, at first wrought havoc with the mind of the Bavarian. 
He is a stolid, slow-moving fellow, gruff on the surface, though 
of kinder and gentler heart than the stern Northerner. He 
loves his comfort and hates to leave accustomed ways of life. 
When he is forced to do so, his confusion and anger are apt to 
lead him to excesses, until he tires and slips back to his old 
habits. So in the early days of the revolution, Munich was the 
scene of two most extreme and violent attempts at setting up a 
communistic state; yet today it shows fewer revolutionary 
changes than any other part of Germany. Its government is 
comfortably reactionary. A few extreme radicals of the 
idealistic t5T3e have seats in it, but they are kindly tolerated, 
flattered with insignificant concessions and neglected. It is the 
center of the armed force of German reaction, the Orgesch, 
the irregular military organization of Herr Escherich, which 
caused such difficulty to the national government in its attempts 
to carry out the disarmament terms of the treaty. Every 
evening I met large numbers on their way to drill at the various 
headquarters, openly carrying rifles over their shoulders. In 
Munich the police are as numerous as before the revolution 
and they still wear the old royal uniforms. Neither the old nor 
the new German flag is much in evidence, but when there is a 
display, the Bavarian colors appear, and occasionally even 
those of the House of Wittelsbach. 

109 



no GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

The revolution seems to have made the Bavarian more anti- 
Prussian than he was before the war. Now that he is again 
able to have some degree of peace, now that his beer reminds 
him somewhat of the good old days, and his father confessor 
is again willing to comfort him as to the ultimate fate of his 
soul, he puts the responsibility for the late upsets upon the 
foreigner, the Prussian. He doesn't even care to see the 
Prussian visit Munich, lest he stir up more trouble or eat too 
much of the Bavarian food and raise the price of it again. 
When I was there, it was at least as difficult for a Prussian 
to visit Munich as it was for me. Like all foreigners, he had 
to have police permission to enter the city, he had to report 
at headquarters within twenty-four hours of his arrival, the 
time of his stay was strictly limited and his actions were care- 
fully controlled. 

Bavaria wields a weighty club over North Germany. It is 
the farmland of the country. Conscious of the advantage 
this gives, it continually threatens to secede if the North should 
try to force upon it federal regulations which to its slow 
reactionary mind appear too violent a change. Secession 
would undoubtedly ruin both the North and South; but Bavaria 
is retrospective, and therefore ignorant of the results that such 
a move would cause. Meanwhile the new republic is established 
because events brought it to pass and swept the people into 
it; now that it is orderly they accept it, just as they would 
accept their king again, if he returned without too much 
commotion. In ordinary conversation, the people of Munich 
were speaking of the former ruler as their king with the same 
quiet affection as before the war, not because they particularly 
wanted him back but because the stolid farmer-citizen doesn't 
like to be uprooted and is consequently very slow about chang- 
ing his vocabulary. These people are the least political of all 
Germany. The old reactionary leaders, therefore, had only 
to bide their time to assume slowly and unobtrusively their 
old command. For though the revolution forced out the king, 
it did not seriously disturb the real rulers of Munich and there- 
fore of Bavaria: the Hojbrdu and the church. 



THE MIND OF BAVARIA m 

II 

Even the artistic life of Munich today, especially its theatres, 
is curiously under the domination of these powers. But this 
gruff and gentle capital is justly proud of its art and any 
pressure upon it by the authorities therefore must be applied 
carefully and subtly. 

The People's Drama League of Munich is a flourishing 
organization, in most essential details similar to that of Berlin, 
but even freer from all disturbing threats of inner political 
strife. Though it was originally founded by members of the 
Majority Socialist Party, more than half of its 35,000 mem- 
bers today are of the middle classes. Most of the officers of 
the society are moderate Socialists, liberal minded, free from 
reactionary prejudices and determined that no political con- 
siderations shall influence the work of the League. The 
monthly publication of the League, intended principally to give 
its members a deeper understanding of the season's repertory, 
is ranked among the better literary publications of Germany. 
A striking exception to the general character of the member- 
ship is furnished by the editor, a young Bavarian author, 
Richard Scheid, who is an ardent Independent Socialist, former 
Minister of War in Eisner's government, and editor of the 
radical paper Der Kampj. But he carefully keeps party 
politics out of the magazine, which is, moreover, the weapon 
by which the League protects itself from the political inter- 
ference periodically attempted by the authorities of the city. 
On the occasion of one such attempt the editor stated the 
policy of the League thus: " Whenever the stage, as at present, 
is in danger of becoming the arena for confused political pas- 
sions, we will strike; but our blows are meant only for this 
abuse which thinking people of all parties will condemn, not 
for the parties or political convictions themselves. 

'' Let us rejoice that in the present wretched self-mutila- 
tions of our people, there exists at least one field of life which 
is still free from party passions. All of us will do our part, 
whatever position we otherwise may take, if we look upon the 



112 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

stage as a serious element of life, love it, and seek to under- 
stand its premises and conditions. The pleasure we take in 
the theatre signifies in no wise a shallow, superficial desire for 
enjoyment. It is the expression of a very deep need, which 
strives for the discovery, discipline and development of per- 
sonality in the presence of the poetic symbols of life. 

" That which is offered as the best of art in no manner 
offends the moral, religious or political convictions that we 
may entertain outside the theatre. He who is so miserably 
sluggish that for the sake of sheer comfort he avoids the con- 
flict of his convictions with those of others, who is afraid to 
put them to the test of contact with other views and inter- 
pretations, or to strengthen them through contradiction, has no 
claim to the serious stage and had better go to the comedians 
and acrobats. . . . Even when we condemn, let us not fall 
back to the stage of screeching barbarians, who dig up the 
hatchet because their God wears other festive garbs than the 
God of the neighboring tribe." ^ 

Through pressure by the liberal members of the state legis- 
lature the handsome Prinzregententheater has been entirely 
given over to the League since the fall of 1920. Its repertory 
is made up almost wholly of the German classical and the 
ninteenth-century drama, with a sprinkling of Greek and a 
few Shakespearian plays. As in the drama leagues through- 
out Germany, the tendency is to simplify the staging as far 
as possible in order to produce a greater intimacy between the 
plays and the people. As art is made the concern of the 
people it will invariably become more simple, and as it grows 
more simple, its relation to the people will be increasingly 
intimate. 

In addition to its own theatre, the League has the privilege 
of leasing large blocks of seats at very reasonable prices in the 
other two state theatres, the large Bavarian National Theatre 
with its repertory of opera and drama, and the small Residenz- 
Theater which is devoted principally to modern plays. The 
new director of these theatres. Dr. Karl Zeiss, freely consults 

1 Muuchner yolksbiihne, 1920, p. 34. 



THE MIND OF BAVARIA 113 

with the League as to his repertory. When good productions 
are staged at the various private theatres of the city, the League 
arranges opportunities for its members to attend these also. In 
general it seemed to me a very serious and unobtrusive organ- 
ization, attempting to establish as natural a relationship as 
possible between the drama and the people to free and clear 
the people's mind through contact with the drama, and to keep 
the drama pure by bringing it before a simple, naturally re- 
ceptive audience. Yet the authorities of the city and the state, 
largely controlled by the church, seem to sense in the League 
some curious danger threatening their influence. Whenever 
an opportunity presents itself they do their utmost to impede 
the League's work. 

If the slightest criticism or caricature of Bavarian clericals 
occurs, the reactionary element of the audience is almost 
certain to interrupt the play with hisses and cat-calls, and on 
the following day the reactionary papers will use the incident 
to launch attacks upon the dangerous radicalism of the League. 
If in addition there should appear within a play a slur of some 
sort on the old monarchical group, a riot is almost certain. 
When Wedekind's Schloss Wetterstein was first played in 
Munich, its daring satire against the old society caused fre- 
quent interruptions from part of the audience. When in the 
play a persecuted member of society hurled against a sleek and 
prosperous villain of the ruling class the threat, " I will have 
your prince whipped out of his monarchy! " reserves had to 
be called to restore order. 

During the Kapp Putsch in March, 1920, the reactionaries 
of Munich thought they saw a chance to rid themselves defi- 
nitely of the League by treating it as a dangerous rebel organ- 
ization. The military commander who was put in charge of 
the city during those few days of reactionary opera-bouffe, 
ordered the League disbanded and occupied its theatre with a 
company of soldiers liberally supplied with machine guns. At 
the last performance which the League was allowed to give, 
the approaches to all the exits and to the restaurant were 
guarded by machine guns trained upon the audience. The 



114 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

latter is said to have been mildly amused and to nave passed 
humorous resolutions of protest, while the soldiers smarted 
under the farce they were compelled to play. The Putsch 
disappeared in a very few days and the League quietly took 
up its work again. For a time it suffered some inconvenience 
because it was, as it still is, dependent on the regular compa- 
nies of the state theatres many of whom were of the reaction- 
ary group and markedly neglected their work when playing 
before an audience wholly made up of members of the League. 
The new director of the state theatres has put a definite stop 
to this practice. 

Even the Hojbrdu does its part in making difficult that part 
of the work of the League which is concerned with developing 
a proper audience. In the official publications of the League 
the editors frequently feel the need of reminding a small group 
of the membership that theatrical performances are not beer 
concerts and that rowdyism and crude jollity are out of place. 



Ill 

When direct interference with the work of the League 
proved of no avail, the reactionary elements in Munich set 
about to develop a counter league to save from contamination 
the people for whose welfare they hold themselves responsible. 
This new league is simply a branch of the Buhnenvolksbund 
of the Rhine Provinces, though they attempt to make it appear 
an organization developed by the people themselves. It is 
headed by dignitaries of the church and by prominent reaction- 
ary officials of the state and the city. Its political activity 
consists not so much in the dramatic program offered to the 
members as in the extensive propaganda through which it 
warns the people against the dangerous character of the Munich 
Volksbuhne and draws them into its own league. It floods 
the city with posters and handbills describing the older league 
as a society of dangerous Socialists and disintegrating inter- 
nationalists, organized and financed by scheming Jewish poli- 
ticians. The cry against the Jewish danger is a very effective 



THE MIND OF BAVARIA 115 

weapon for the reactionaries in Munich. The people of the 
city have a very vivid recollection of the prominent part taken 
by certain Jewish politicians in the excesses of the two com- 
munistic revolutions. It is a simple task, therefore, to turn 
their resentment into a general anti-Semitic feeling, and even 
to bring a whole movement under suspicion if any trace of 
Jewish influence can be proved. 

But even more effective is the propaganda of the reactionary 
league which commands the people to turn their attention to 
" Christian art " and guarantees a repertory in that spirit. To 
the ordinary member of the Catholic Church of Munich and 
South Bavaria a demand of this sort is an order which he has 
not the courage to disregard. For while defeat and revolution 
so confused the mind of the average German as to throw the 
political situation into hopeless disorder, the Catholic Party 
was able to maintain its discipline, and every parish priest is 
still a local boss. Demands by the new league are, therefore, 
orders from the church, and to disobey is to endanger one's 
soul. Even so, this Catholic league in the heart of Catholic 
Bavaria is not yet quite so strong in membership as the older 
liberal league; and the hysteria of its propaganda indicates that 
the disintegrating influences of the many new forces at work 
within the country are threatening even the old Catholic 
discipline. 

It is very hard to determine just what the promoters of this 
league mean by " Christian art." They send their members 
into the city theatres to see the same plays that the older 
league has chosen for its repertory, but seem to disapprove of 
every modern play unless its author happens to be a Catholic 
of good standing. The objections to most of these plays can 
hardly lie in their religious qualities, but simply indicate the 
traditional fear of the reactionary to face squarely the forces 
that are demanding new adjustments. They have put their 
ban upon only one of the older plays. The classical play of 
religious tolerance, Lessing's Nathan the Wise, they have for- 
bidden to their members, not so much because they feared its 
influence upon their people, it seemed to me, as because they 



ii6 GERM ANT IN TRAVAIL 

felt that they had to illustrate their idea of an unchristian 
drama by some concrete example. It was a typical case of 
reactionary blundering and afforded general amusement to the 
Munich press. If the average member of this league were 
not of a kind to obey the orders of his religious advisers with- 
out questioning, and thereby gain the peace of mind necessary 
to enjoy his Hojbrdu thoroughly, this action might have caused 
much trouble, 

A young and unassuming literary priest of Munich, Dr. 
Dimmler, was helping the Catholic cause far more simply and 
more effectively in the summer of 1920 than the Christian 
Drama League and its laborious propaganda. That summer 
the Passion Play of Oberammergau should have been given. 
But scarcity of food made it impossible for the little village 
to undertake to feed the visitors who would have come to the 
performances. In this circumstance a private theatre in 
Munich saw a chance to improve its fortunes and staged a very 
good performance of an old French version of the Passion 
story. The price of admission was high and the effort too 
literary to win the endorsement of the church. After a short 
time the play failed because of lack of patronage. Dr. 
Dimmler, however, realized what importance a Passion Play 
might assume in the political and religious entry of the church 
into the dramatic field, if only the play were composed and 
staged in a style approaching that of Oberammergau. 

He was the author of a series of short plays for amateur 
performances in " Christian homes," With this experience, he 
set out to dramatize very simply the story of the Passion. 
Though the result has not much artistic value, it shows a keen 
perception of the audience for which it is intended. It is 
built against the background of that large store of pious memo- 
ries which every Bavarian Catholic accumulates by attendance 
at mass from early childhood. In simple manner the author 
unfolds the story of the sufferings of Christ. Christ, as the 
central figure, does not speak a word or make a move not 
thoroughly familiar to the people from the Lenten services 
and the most popular sacred legends of the Catholic Church. 



THE MIND OF BAVARIA 117 

The play was staged in the open, in a clearing of the beauti- 
ful woods of Herzogpark just out of Munich. The stage was 
of simple construction, in pageant style. The arch in the 
center was so arranged that by a few ingenious shifts it could 
be made to represent the hall for the Last Supper, the Mount of 
Olives, Pilate's judgment seat, or Calvary. The large wooden 
structures on either side gave the necessary illusion of expanse 
and furnished necessary exits. The domes formed by the 
magnificent trees round about had remarkable acoustic quali- 
ties and furnished the impressive atmosphere necessary for a 
proper effect. 

In spots the composition of the play was very poor. In 
building up the character of Judas, the author evidently felt 
that this figure represented no sacred memories upon which 
he need play, and he gave free rein to his dramatic talent. His 
idea was to depict in Judas a subtle conflict between love for 
the law and love for Christ, and yet to make him a person 
reminiscent of the Judas of the popular old German woodcuts. 
He had such poor success that the actor had to resort to weird 
pantomime to express anything at all. Pilate was a weak, 
hen-pecked villain and Claudia a sentimental German Haus- 
frau. As a whole it was an awkward dramatic construction, 
but attuned closely and in a very interesting way to the reli- 
gious memories of the audience and therefore one capable of 
unusual effects. The crowds used in the play were very well 
drilled and excellently costumed. Where the action lagged or 
unsympathetic secular scenes threatened the general atmos- 
phere of the performance, the orchestra, hidden somewhere 
behind the stage, played familiar chorals and chants, thus con- 
tributing its part toward releasing within the audience the 
pious reminiscences upon which the play depended. 

As soon as the church authorities realized what help this 
play might give their cause, they backed it with the full power 
of the organization. On the doors of every Catholic Church in 
Munich and for a radius of many miles around the city, posters 
advertised the Passion Play and urged its benefits upon the 
congregation. A gayly costumed peasant throng would crowd 



ii8 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

the paths to Herzogpark every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, 
telling their beads as if on a pious pilgrimage. Incidentally the 
young priest-playwright, when I saw him last, was on the point 
of turning into a successful business man, and was planning 
to incorporate his venture. He was quite conscious of the im- 
portance of his play in the political struggle engaging Bavaria, 
though he professed that it was a purely artistic undertaking. 

IV 

During the two attempts at a communistic republic in 
Munich the old royal theatres were entirely given over to the 
people. No admission was charged and the ruling commission 
controlled the repertory. The result is said to have been a 
laughable farce. The actors demanded exorbitant fees for 
their services and amused themselves by confusing the audience 
with extreme caricatures of the parts assigned to them. With 
the resultant reaction the old authorities, the old discipline, 
and also the old favoritism in respect to repertory were re- 
instated, but the actors succeeded in maintaining their claims 
to very greatly increased salaries. As a result there was a 
deficit of several million marks at the end of the first year, and 
the state had to be approached for subsidies. The friends 
both of the Volksbiihne and of the Catholic League were power- 
ful enough in the legislature to stipulate as a condition of the 
granting of such subsidies that the theatres be in large part 
given over to the needs of their societies, and that a new 
director be appointed in sympathy with the work of the two 
leagues and with ability to improve the quality of the dramatic 
performances. Inasmuch as the aims of the two leagues are 
extremely divergent, however similar their methods in the 
theatre itself must be, this represented a very difficult task. 

The state was very fortunate in procuring in Dr. Karl Zeiss 
a man who has proved his ability through very good work in 
the management of the theatres of Dresden and Frankfurt on 
the Main. I spoke to him about a week after he had entered 
upon his duties on September ist, 192a He was highly enthu- 



THE MIND OF BAVARIA 119 

siastic, and very confident that he would be all the freer to 
develop the theatres of Munich according to his best ideals 
because the varied interests behind him assured him of the sup- 
port of every faction. That undoubtedly would have been true 
if he could have maintained the strict neutrality which he 
believed the situation demanded and could have devoted him- 
self whole-heartedly to his artistic tasks. However, the words 
from Goethe's Egmont, " Safety and peace! Order and free- 
dom ! " which he chose as the motto for his program upon taking 
office, lead one one to suspect that from the very start he was 
too conscious of the political pressure upon his artistic plans. 

His first season has been one of artistic rather than political 
neutrality. His best work is said to have consisted in helping 
to put upon a high plane the performances for the Volksbilhne 
in the Prinzregententheater . In the other theatres, where he 
had to serve the general public and both the leagues, he 
showed less courage or clarity of purpose. Reactionary prej- 
udice succeeded in hounding several of his best actors into 
resigning, thus drawing him into the political fight in order 
to protect himself, and robbing his real work of much energy 
and time. It almost seems that the political neutrality which 
is essential can be maintained only through colorlessness in 
matters of art, and that dramatic art in Munich can be free 
only if liberalism prevails in politics and gives art a chance 
to live its own life. 



An enthusiastic group of young IMunich radicals, a remnant 
of the aesthetic dreamers who formed part of Eisner's follow- 
ing in the revolution of 191 8, have set up a small theatre of 
their own to foster " revolutionary art/' and to develop a 
theatre commune in a truer sense than the one developed by 
the Volksbiihne. They too profess an absolute freedom from 
political purpose; but you need only talk with the leaders or 
mix with the audience in the court before its small back-yard 
theatre to know that their minds are so occupied with protests 
against the established organizations of society, and with the 



I20 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

construction of radical Utopias, that their lives cannot easily 
be divorced from politics. 

The company is composed of talented young professional 
actors, whose enthusiasm for the social service which they 
believe they are rendering gives a delightful quality to their 
work. They have that extreme paternalism of youth which 
collects a little audience of faithful followers to open up before 
them exact visions of the ultimate values of life. The hall 
in which they play is an old barn, transformed into a small 
theatre at little expense but with much good and simple taste. 
The seats are crude benches, and the stage is so small that the 
actors moving about on it seem unduly tall. And yet I met 
nowhere else an audience that felt so much at home as the 
people in this hall. One of Anzengruber's realistic dramas 
was being played extremely well, considering the scarcity of 
equipment. The audience was listening not with the reverent 
seriousness you find at a good performance at the Volksbuhne, 
but in a spirit of natural and happy participation. I felt 
clearly the intimacy between the actors and the individuals in 
the audience, as you might find it in a small, cultured amateur 
society; but there was nothing amateurish about the perform- 
ance. Nor did I sense during the play itself any of the strong 
political current that I found so dominant in the courtyard 
outside and in the theatre offices. It was evident that every- 
body was having too good a time to think of their political 
grievances. 

This theatre belongs to the audience in a very real sense. 
The necessary capital was collected by selling bonds at twenty 
marks (forty cents at that time). No single member is 
allowed to own more than fifteen such bonds and no one is 
entitled to more than one vote in the assembly. Members 
pay about a third of the admission price asked of strangers, 
which is only ten marks (twenty cents) for the best seat. 
Evidently little money is required for the venture. All the 
work except that of the actors, who receive a very modest 
salary, is voluntary. Each member devotes a large share of his 
leisure time to the theatre. They organize in shifts to do the 



THE MIND OF BAVARIA 121 

necessary office work, carpentering, decorating, cleaning or 
whatever else is needed. 

The repertory consists almost exclusively of modern plays 
taken from the life of the people of the humbler classes. But 
if the performance I saw is a good criterion, these revolution- 
aries are merely kind, jolly Bavarians who are finding a very 
high-grade substitute for the crude entertainments of the beer 
halls. Though they grumble overmuch against political oppres- 
sion, when you engage them in conversation, or dream fantastic 
dreams of communistic heavens, they certainly are not the an- 
archists reactionary papers picture them, nor such perverters of 
art as the Volksbuhne would have you believe. Their perform- 
ances are so good that political aims are for the time forgotten. 
In an interesting manner contact with art, even in such a case 
as this, tends to clear political confusion. 



VI 

Munich possesses in the Kammerspiele a theatre which be- 
fore the war enjoyed the reputation of being one of the very 
best private theatres in Germany. It was a refined pioneer 
in the interpretation of the modern drama, and by ingenious 
recasting opened up the riches of many old plays for its modern 
audience. Among its actors it had some of the best talent of 
the country. Its director. Otto Falckenberg, ranks as a highly 
talented artist and an eminent student of the drama. The 
audience was that rather large group of refined, gentle, in- 
tellectual aristocrats of Munich, who represented a striking 
contrast to the cruder jolly followers of the Hojbrdu. 

Today this theatre is one of the sad ruins of the war. It 
has the same director and most of the high-grade actors, but 
its spirit has been killed by the coming of a new audience. 
The same economic situation which compels the theatre to 
ask very high prices of admission in order to exist, has im- 
poverished the old audience and made it dependent upon the 
drama leagues. The new audience is merely a group of the 
war-rich, without a trace of the refinement which made possible 



122 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

the former quality of work and without any particular desire 
to develop it. It has the old Hofbrdu taste and wants Hofbrdu 
food, but wants it served at the aristocratic table and with 
the refined service of the Kammerspiele. It is a sorrowful 
sight to see Falckenberg and his company attempting to main- 
tain their self-respect by giving this former quality to their 
work, but being dragged down inevitably toward the level of 
the audience. The result is a sharp disturbing discord. It 
demonstrates that a high-grade private theatre cannot exist 
in Germany under present conditions, and emphasizes the im- 
portance of the drama leagues and of the city or state theatres, 
in close relation with the drama leagues, in preserving the qual- 
ity of the drama. 

VII 

The real amusement centers for the unthinking masses of 
Munich, the " Great Society," are the innumerable beer halls, 
descendants of the Hofbrdu. Even the moving pictures can- 
not compete with them. Every night large numbers of such 
halls are open, with cabaret programs in which the Tyrolese or 
Bavarian comedians predominate. These halls are tightly 
packed and the smoke is thick almost to suffocation, but the 
beer is cheap and better than for many years of war regula- 
tions. It therefore takes but little ingenuity to win applause 
and laughter, or anger if you want it. 

The comedians in these places are the real politicians of the 
people. They seem to have the power of sensing accurately 
the temper of the large crowds and of playing to it. Their 
couplets reflect in the broadest way the reaction to the affairs 
of public life. The refrain is everywhere the same: " It all is 
a muddle; we cannot understand any of it; just let us alone; 
give us back the good old comfort and the good old beer, and 
the authorities can grind along on their jobs if they enjoy 
them." 

I saw no public holiday in Germany so thoroughly and so 
universally enjoyed, as the annual Oktoberfest in 1920, which 
the Munich authorities ordered to take place a fortnight early, 



THE MIND OF BAVARIA 123 

about the middle of September, and at which pre-war beer was 
restored to the public for the first time. It seemed as though 
all Munich were reeling for joy, though joy was not sufficient 
cause for some of the staggering I saw. The conservative 
papers on the following day commented extensively on the spirit 
of the celebration as on a great victory. They evidently felt 
that their trials were over, now that their beloved confederate, 
the Hojbrdu, had again recovered his former robust health. 



VII 
AUSTRIA'S DREAM 



AS YOU probe into the conditions of the small republic 
of German Austria, you are tempted to draw the 
conclusion that, while there are plenty of men who 
talk and act like the Austrians of old, Austria as a country 
no longer exists at all. Politically and economically the con- 
fusion is so great that all attempts to clear it appear like help- 
less child's play. There are political parties and subdivisions 
of parties galore. The monarchists divide themselves into 
three contending groups, each with a determined mind of its 
own as to who is to occupy the throne. The more or less 
democratic capitalistic class and the liberals are so poorly 
organized that they exhaust themselves in useless theorizing. 
The squabbles among the various t3qDes of Socialists and Com- 
munists are downright ludicrous. The Catholic Church alone 
seems to exert some degree of control over its members 
throughout all the parties. 

The people seem to grow more and more dumbfounded as 
they realize more clearly how small a nation they are now. 
A feeling of helplessness weighs them down as though they 
had lost all power of self-control. In the fall of 1920^ a 
dollar bought nearly three hundred Austrian crowns as 
against five crowns before the war. Prices for food and cloth- 
ing had risen almost in the same proportion. A dinner at a 
restaurant cost two hundred crowns, and yet the restaurants 
were filled with people eating well. A good many Austrians 
seemed even to have grown rich on their country's misery. 

1 The Austrian crown has fallen very considerably since and has made 
conditions even more artificial. 

124 



AUSTRIA'S DREAM 125 

Meanwhile the great majority starved at home, or lived in a 
daze, and not a pleasant daze but rather that of a child severely 
punished for some wrong it cannot itself measure. The 
Austrian is like a child. He has little of the Eastern fatalism, 
but he is proud, and in his greatest misery he his naively 
optimistic. If you question him regarding the political affairs 
of the country, he will answer with half a smile: " I don't 
know what to make of it. They are mad, all of them! " 

The Austrians simply cannot comprehend their economic 
condition. They do not understand the exchange; they see 
in it only the result of a fatal war, and war must pass some 
time or other. They are a helpless lot, and yet they feel that 
they must do something to maintain their self-respect and to 
win back the respect of others. 

You hear them say: " But everybody loves Vienna. People 
from everywhere will always come to be happy and to smile in 
Vienna, to hear the Viennese opera and enjoy the Viennese 
operetta." Vienna, however, has suffered more than any other 
part of Austria. It is a city of traditions, and traditions to be 
enjoyed today in reminiscence, not in fact. Vienna is cut off 
from the country that fed it and supplied it with comforts for 
visitors. More and more, too, it is being depleted of its artists 
as they get a chance to work at better money, to live on better 
fare, and to play to less starved audiences in other places. 

But once the opera, the concerts, and the high-grade theatre 
are gone, Austria will have nothing but what Germany can 
give it. Austria does not object at all to a union with Germany, 
but it does object violently to coming to Germany like a beggar. 
Then all its self-respect would go, its optimism too; and even 
reminiscence would be bitter. 

Therefore the Austrians are determined to save their art at 
least. Meanwhile it may be necessary to live on very small 
rations, but no outsider need be aware of that. They will 
tighten their belts and hide their poverty behind the walls of 
Vienna, while they find some small, pleasant town in the hills 
and make of it a place to exhibit their music, their opera, and 
their drama. 



126 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

n 

In August, 1920, I found the President of Austria and most 
of his Cabinet, the leading business men of the country, and a 
dozen of the greatest intellectual leaders gathered together in 
Salzburg. Salzburg is a city in the foothills of the Austrian 
Alps, rich in monuments and the history of Austrian art, un- 
scathed by war and far from the actualities of suffering Vienna. 
These men were planning to resuscitate the country by estab- 
lishing here a grand festival playhouse. To them this play- 
house is to be a sanctuary, offering an escape out of the miseries 
of their present life into art, where they can seek new human 
power in the pictures of the drama, and new faith and new 
promises in the secrets of music. They think of it as a temple, 
and not as a theatre. They are disappointed with your lack 
of comprehension if you look on their project as the establish- 
ment of a large theatre, where the best plays might be given 
in the most approved style before large audiences, who come 
from all over the world to see what new effects can be produced 
by an artistic people under stress. They will launch upon a 
long discourse as to the need of spiritual regeneration after the 
degenerating influences of the war. They will speak of the 
decline of the theatre, due to the fact that the box office has 
gained ascendancy over art and exhibits only cheap, exotic 
sensationalism. Therefore they propose to turn from the 
theatre to the festival playhouse, an inspiring monument to 
art, located not in the center of a bustling city but in a stately 
grove on the edge of the Austrian Alps. This they will have 
served by producers and actors intent upon ministering to the 
spiritual needs of an audience capable of reverent devotion. 

Clearly this is not a theatre as we know it. It is so strange, 
in fact, that we involuntarily suspect it and look for other 
motives. In such a mood indeed it is possible to find a trace 
of commercial motives and not a little of national purpose in 
the scheme; and yet these people are sincere in their avowals. 
As a matter of fact, the greatest of their national drama was 
conceived in a festive ethical spirit not very different from the 



AUSTRIA'S DREAM 127 

purpose they now profess. Today, when their material misery 
is greatest, they are simply reviving that spirit and framing it 
in the most appropriate fashion they can conceive. 

Salzburg is very near Germany. That seems to them a 
distinct advantage, and is indicative of their consciousness of 
German relationship, which continually pulls at the boundaries 
set up by the treaty. While Salzburg is now simply a modest 
peasant city located within the rich valleys of a broad mountain 
stream fed by the Austrian Alps, it was for more than a thou- 
sand years, up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the 
residency of powerful archbishops, who adorned the city and 
its surroundings with cathedrals, chapels and monasteries, 
with a university, with fortresses and castles, and pleasure 
palaces and gardens of exquisite taste. It is one of those rare 
cities of Europe that the ages have lavishly favored and modern 
life has hardly touched at all. The surrounding hills have had 
centuries to accustom themselves to the works of man, to the 
rugged old castles and the newer Renaissance buildings, and 
have accepted them as equals in the landscape. 

They propose to build the festival playhouse not in the city 
itself, but just outside in the suburb of Hellbrun, where Arch- 
bishop Wolf Dietrich once spent the country's wealth in build- 
ing a sumptuous palace and rococo garden for the entertain- 
ment of his many guests. In the medieval woods nearby there 
is already a natural theatre worn into the lava rock, where it 
is said Wolf Dietrich occasionally amused his guests with an 
Italian farce. They have chosen their site in a broad clearing 
of these woods, with a view upon a glacier, so that before you 
reach it it you must pass the city, the palace and gardens of old 
Wolf Dietrich and the deep woods beyond, and thus are far 
removed from interference by the worries of daily life. 

Professor Poelzig, the most famous theatre architect in 
Germany and head of the Berlin Art School, who presented a 
marvelous set of plans for the playhouse, rather astonished 
the judges by using but few of the innovations which he so 
boldly incorporated in Reinhardt's new theatre in Berlin. 
They were convinced at once that his plan embodied the spirit 



128 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

of the enterprise. He had absorbed the past of Salzburg, had 
found its predominating characteristics the still lingering 
atmosphere of the jolly courts of the archbishops and the old 
Italian baroque monumental buildings, curled, capricious, non- 
academic. It was not the stiff and decadent rococo of Potsdam, 
but rather that reflected in the music of Mozart, Salzburg's 
favorite son. He pictured a theatre nestling into this historic 
background in intimate relation to the surrounding hills, of 
refined baroque style with picture stages and rising tiers of 
galleries, intimate, a bit aristocratic, impressive not so much 
for luxuriousness as for the quiet spaciousness which invites 
everyone to come and worship. The plans of Poelzig offer 
to the people a house in which they can reverently enjoy the 
riches of the past. The meadow in front of the playhouse 
will become a garden in which open-air performances can be 
held and around which will wind rococo pergolas leading to a 
miniature theatre for more intimate or experimental plays and 
to a recreation hall on the opposite side. 

Only such plays and works of music are to be given as truly 
serve a festal purpose. By that they mean performances 
which will release within the people their truest hopes, will 
make the Austrian realize his genuine foundations, will free him 
from extraneous and misleading ambitions, and will take him 
out of the confusions of the present by making him conscious 
of himself. It is not at all a theatre to them, but a national 
spiritual forum, expressing the belief and the longing which 
strongly influenced Austrian and German art at its best 
moment and which has determined the standard by which 
they call things classic. There must be no concessions, they 
say, to the desire for the spectacular or sensational; above all, 
no catering to delicate aesthetic fads or to literary oddities in 
festive garbs. 

Austrian art is to be preferred to German art, and German 
art to foreign. For the present they propose to play only 
Shakespeare and Calderon among non-German dramatists. 
Of German art they will produce only those plays in which 
the influence of the South has softened the harsh materialistic 



AUSTRIA'S DREAM 129 

Northern note. For the first season the following program is 
proposed: Of the drama they will produce Life as a Dream, 
a symbolic comedy by the Austrian classical poet Grillparzer, 
and Schiller's Bride of Messina, the consecration of tragedy 
as they perceive it. Mozart's Magic Flute and Wagner's 
Lohengrin have been suggested as the most appropriate operas, 
supplemented by concert performances of Schubert's Mass in 
E sharp Major, Bruckner's Mass in F Minor and Beethoven's 
Ninth Symphony. 

in 

Most impressive is the devotion of the artists to the vision 
this proposal arouses in them. The foremost have deliberately 
rearranged their lives to devote themselves wholly to its real- 
ization. Hugo von Hofmannsthal has bought a home in Salz- 
burg, has settled there, and has just completed an adaptation 
of Calderon for presentation at the playhouse. The composer, 
Richard Strauss, is developing a new style in his latest compo- 
sitions under the influence of this new ideal, and has pledged 
to the festival playhouse the net proceeds of his recent foreign 
tours. A half dozen other prominent Austrian artists have 
left Vienna to devote themselves more fully to the Salzburg 
idea. Max Reinhardt, the most ingenious of German pro- 
ducers, finding the masses of the Prussian capital hopelessly 
dulled to artistic effects, has turned over to others his chain 
of Berlin theatres through which he captured the imagination 
of students of the stage the world over. He has lost interest 
even in his large circus theatre before its possibilities have 
been fully exploited; wisely, perhaps, feeling that he has 
reared in it a wild and unruly thing which never can be tamed 
to serve the finer human ends. In Salzburg, he has bought 
one of the beautiful old palaces and has settled there, pledging 
his powers wholly to the festival playhouse. 

In August, 1920, on the occasion of the annual general 
meeting of the organizations that are working to bring the play- 
house into immediate being, Reinhardt gave a performance of 
Hofmannsthal's adaptation of the old English morality play 



I30 GERMANT IN TRAVAIL 

Everyman. The performance, which was worthy of Rein- 
hardt's genius, was given in the open square before the beauti- 
ful Renaissance cathedral. The enthusiasm of the many dele- 
gates, the atmosphere of the city, even the surrounding hills, 
he forced to serve as background to his play. He gathered 
from Berlin and Vienna the best actors and inspired them 
with his purpose, so that they worked long and diligently in 
preparation for the event with no other remuneration than the 
consciousness of performing a great artistic service. He 
created a performance which everybody present felt to be a 
true expression of the festal purpose they are seeking to 
define as the basis of their undertaking. 

The devotion of the authors, producers, actors and artists 
is one of the most convincing evidences of the power of this 
novel idea. If those partaking in the various festival per- 
formances did not enter whole-heartedly into the spirit in which 
the idea was conceived, if they took their parts in a professional 
spirit, simply as an opportunity to exhibit their talents or 
increase their revenues, the playhouse would soon be turned 
into an ordinary theatre or concert hall, and not only its 
reason for existence but, in all likelihood, its chances for suc- 
cess, would be destroyed. It is, therefore, assumed that great 
artists of the drama, the opera and the concert stage will look 
upon Salzburg as a place to which they can escape after the 
season in the ever less idealistic theatres, to devote the summer 
months to renewal of their faith in the highest elements of 
their calling. It is proposed to build small studios in the suburb 
near the playhouse and to form a colony for the artists in which 
they may devote themselves wholly to the spirit of their mission 
and to a deeper study of the works of art which they are to re- 
produce. They are to have this living free, but it is not ex- 
pected that any other remuneration will be asked. 

The location of Salzburg guarantees that the audience, too, 
will be in a frame of mind quite different from that of the 
ordinary playgoer. It is equally far from Vienna and from 
Munich. It will be impossible to hurry on from " the city," 
take in a performance and hurry back again. The promoters 



AUSTRIA'S DREAM 131 

of the idea will not have their efforts spoiled by the tired busi- 
ness man, pressed for time. The whole plan is arranged on the 
principle that hurry and devotion are deadly enemies. They 
refuse even to make arrangements for a tram-car or any other 
conveyance to reach the clearing where the playhouse is to be 
located. On the other hand, they plan an elaborate system of 
well-built walks through the thick forests and hills that sur- 
round the theatre. If the undertaking should prove to be the 
success of which they dream, they hope to build large and com- 
fortable hotels out in the suburbs so as to induce their visitors 
to spend as much time as possible walking through the gardens 
and woods with a view of the glaciers. Thus the evening and 
the festival play will find them in a mood sensitive to the chords 
which the artist would strike upon their souls. 



IV 

It is a regeneration through art of which these men are 
dreaming. Though it may at first seem fantastic, many of 
Austria's best men have enough faith in it to devote their lives 
to its realization. Throughout Austria there are branches of 
the organization to propagate the idea. Other branches have 
been formed in Holland and Scandinavia, and in the larger 
cities of Germany. To the idealists of Central Europe it 
represents a positive and effective reaction to the Prussian 
spirit. They hope that from it will come throughout Europe 
a strengthening of the kind of faith that filled the century of 
idealism following 1750. 



A FINAL WORD 

IN THE preceding pages I have kept as closely as possible 
to a simple narrative of what I saw in Germany. I have 
intentionally refrained from formulating a theory of the 
relation of the German drama to German life since no theo- 
retical formulation can describe that relation as vividly as 
the events themselves. The rapid increase in size of the new 
audience in the various drama leagues, the growth of under- 
standing and of intimate appreciation of the drama, the sincere 
and genuine intensity with which the new audience searches 
the drama for answers to the questions of its own life, are 
proof enough of the power which the German drama wields 
over its audience and of the purpose with which the audience 
approaches the drama. All the playwrights, critics, directors, 
and even most actors who are working in contact with this 
new audience, are clearly conscious of its nature and of its 
longing for a clearer insight into life. 

The purpose of an audience determines its interpretation of 
the drama and, when that purpose is as strong and prevalent 
as in the drama leagues, it determines also the nature of the 
drama itself as far as it lives within the audience. This audi- 
ence, moreover, and with it the best critics and playwrights of 
the country, accepts readily the statement that the drama has 
a purpose, provided only that the purpose be a genuine clari- 
fying of that which is most real and most worth while in life. 
At the same time they very quickly and surely distinguish 
from such a purpose the purely superficial, dogmatic moraliz- 
ing as found in many a problem play and thesis play. But 
they turn with equal resentment or else with a plain lack of 
understanding from the theory that the drama has no pur- 
pose, or that the drama because of its purpose to clarify life is 
moral and therefore cannot be artistic. Art for art's sake 

132 



A FINAL WORD 133 

when applied to the drama destroys the drama for them. 
Nietzsche expressed this attitude very well in his " Twilight 
of the Idols'';^ 

" The fight against purpose in art has always been the fight 
against the moralizing tendency in art, against subordinating 
art to morality. Uart pour I'art says : The devil take moral- 
ity! If the purpose of moralizing and uplift is excluded 
from art, it still does not follow that art has no purpose at 
all, that it has no goal, no meaning, that it is I'art pour I'art — 
a worm biting its own tail. Better no purpose at all than a 
moral purpose! — thus pure passion speaks. A psychologist 
however will ask: What does art do? Does it not praise, 
glorify, select, emphasize? In all this it strengthens or 
weakens certain valuations. — Is this only a by-product, an 
accident, something in which the instinct of the artist does not 
share at all? Is it not rather the very presupposition for the 
ability of the artist? Is not his deepest instinct directed upon 
art or rather upon the meaning of art, upon life, upon the 
desirability of life? Art is the great stimulus to life. How can it 
be interpreted as without purpose or goal, as I'art pour I'art? " 

Of recent German poets Richard Dehmel has studied most 
thoroughly the relation of art to life. He attacks most bitterly 
those who hold to the theory of art for art's sake, who " con- 
sciously go into ecstasies over the unconscious." In his auto- 
biography he says of such theorists: ^ 

" To be sure, they are quite right, these gentlemen of the 
unconscious. One can live without sense, and die even more 
easily. Knowledge is ' in the last analysis ' nothing but insan- 
ity; art is ' at bottom ' nothing but higher madness; at bottom 
everything everywhere is merely madness; at bottom even mad- 
ness is reasonable; at bottom everything amounts to the same 
thing; at bottom there is nothing but animated dirt; at bottom 
every roach is a prodigy, and in naivety every ox is superior 
to the greatest genius." 

The purpose of getting a deeper insight into life, of estab- 



» Werke, VIII, p. 135. 

* Gesammelte Werke, VIII, p. 10. 



134 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

lishing man's relation to life upon sounder instincts and higher 
ideals has been the strongest force in the development of the 
modern German drama. As I have said before, the real 
Renaissance, its divine, pure joy in life and in the world, its 
playful faith in man as the center of life hardly touched the 
heavier German. Only out of such an attitude to life can a 
real meaning be given to art for art's sake, especially in rela- 
tion to the drama. Only such divine unconcern can create 
man in the fulness of life and put him into conflict with other 
men for better or for worse. To the exclusion of such a 
Renaissance spirit Germany was absorbed in the Reforma- 
tion and in Humanism, in religion, philosophy and learning. 
Through these forces came the rebirth of the individual in 
Germany. What strength there is to the German expression 
of that time is born of an overpowering religious fervor. When 
this fervor lost its intensity it grew conventional and dogmatic 
and contentious, and spent its dying strength in the chaotic 
Thirty Years' War. For a long time the German spirit lay 
dormant, and German expression was limited to imitation of 
the more robust spirits of its neighbors, to mere ration- 
alism or to a few flashes from the smoldering religious spirit. 
When Lessing again aroused the German spirit from its 
stupor he was most conscious of his purpose to reinvigor- 
ate German life. Though the German audience was not yet 
able to appreciate his purpose, Lessing attempted to inspire it 
by establishing a national theatre at Hamburg. 

The great characters in Goethe's dramas, Gotz, Faust and 
Iphigenie, very clearly arise from a desire to form for his 
countrymen an ever clearer vision of the fundamental forces 
of German life. Without in the least detracting from his fame 
as a poet he can very aptly be called the educator of his nation 
in spiritual values. Under Schiller's influence Goethe took a 
very vital interest in his work as director of the theatre at 
Weimar and the influence this theatre might have upon the 
German audience as a whole. The entire power of Schiller 
lies in the consummate force with which he portrayed to his 
people their own highest instincts and ideals. He is the 



A FINAL WORD 135 

teacher of morality and idealism, the uplifter of Germany, if 
you like. But his moral fervor is so genuine, his contact with 
the people so close and true and his relation to the fundamental 
spirit of the German Reformation so intimate, that to his people 
he is the greatest of all poets, not excluding Goethe, even 
though he has but a small fraction of Goethe's real creative 
power. 

The Romanticism of the early nineteenth century dogmati- 
cally and painstakingly avoided all purpose in art, but it did 
not produce a single drama that captured the imagination of 
the people. Kleist and Hebbel on the other hand, became 
great figures in the history of the drama, and with great in- 
tensity again devoted themselves to its fundamental purpose. 
With a feeling more passionate and fervent than that of any 
other German poet Kleist attacked the problem of man and his 
adjustment to society. Hebbel's vivid dramas are swiftly mov- 
ing and deeply probing dialectics by which he tries to solve the 
problem of man's value to the fundamental cultural institu- 
tions. 

Tn the eighties of the last century, naturalism again denied 
all purpose in art, and in its longing to know the mere mech- 
anism of nature, it pretended to deny all purpose in nature also. 
By its emphasis it discovered much in nature that hitherto 
had been neglected. One of these discoveries, however, was 
the dignity of the humblest man, no matter what his fate and 
condition. Out of this resulted a new purpose and a new ethics, 
or rather the old purpose and old ethics founded upon a new 
and broader faith in man. In direct consequence of this new 
faith and of its expression in the new drama the people as a 
whole were educated as never before to an appreciation of 
the drama. When naturalism had performed this function 
and had established the dignity of man without reference to 
his social station, the emphasis again shifted to the inner, 
more spiritual forces, and the purpose of the drama to clarify 
the fundamental forces of man received an almost religious 
sanction. This is clearly the purpose of the present-day ex- 
pressionists, who of all German playwrights best represent the 



136 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

spirit that is trying to develop in the drama leagues. When 
they speak to you of their work, whether it be Hauptmann or 
Toller or Kornfeld or the extreme Mombert, they disclose 
their purpose very clearly. 

The revolution, they say, if it is really to accomplish any- 
thing, must build upon a foundation more truthful than the 
old structure, more vitally inherent in the nation. The gaps 
created by the revolution cannot be filled in merely by new 
institutions. Man himself, the individual man, must first be 
revolutionized and revitalized. Here lies the work of the 
artist. It is his function, if he is a true artist, to create men, 
men who live a life, real, genuine, strong and joyful. To do 
this the artist must enter into a spiritual struggle with the life 
about him until he can so grasp that which is most powerful 
and genuine in life, that he can give it form in the characters 
which he creates. As the artist succeeds in seeing that which 
is truly vital he rises to the faith and joy in life which make 
his pictures clear and convincing. The truth and clarity of his 
picture of life will bring the individual in the audience into so 
close a relationship with art that with the characters of the 
drama he will pass through a process of rebirth. The force 
expressed in the drama will remind the hearer of the force in 
himself, and its simple dignity will give him the desire to 
elevate himself through honest struggle and simplicity. 

This simple optimism of the artists has not yet found expres- 
sion in any one drama powerful enough to be the pathfinder for 
the people, but the spirit of these artists, and of the critics 
and producers who are helping them, has seized upon large 
audiences. It is this which makes the work of the drama leagues 
together with that of Weimar and Salzburg so significant, 
which makes the relation of the audience to the older Ger- 
man drama so intimate and real, and makes the faith in them- 
selves and in their nation so genuinely a constructive force. 



INDEX 



Aeschylus, 83 

Anzengruber, Ludwig, 74, 78, 79, 8 

120 
I'art pour I'art, 132 f 
Austria, 124 f 

Bab, Julius, 75, 91 

Bachant, 55 

Bahr, Hermann, 78 

Bavaria, 34, 109 f 

Bavarian National Theatre, 112 

Bebel, August, 75 

Beer, Max, 17 

Beethoven, 129 

Berlin theatres, 60 f 

Bismarck, 23 

Bjiirnson, Bjornstjerne, 78, 79, 88 

Blueher, Hans, 50 

Blumenthal, Oskar, 75 

Bolshevists, 15 f 

Boy Scouts, S8 

Brahm, Otto, 74 

Breuer, Hans, 54, 57 

Bruckner, Anton, 129 

Buhnenvolksbund, 92, 114 

Burschenschaft, 47 

Calderon, 88, 128, 129 

Center Party, 9 f, 12 f, 92 

Christian art, iiS 

Cologne, 92 

Communists, 11, 14 f, 20, 118 

Constituent Assembly, 7 f, 96 f 

Critics, German dramatic, 61 

Dadaism, 19 f 

Decentralization of Germany, 16 
Dehmel, Richard, 25, 133 
Democratic Party, VH, 7, 10, 13 

IS, 34 
Deutsches Theater, 65, 80 



Dictatorship of Proletariat, 16 
Dietrich, Wolf, 127 
Dimmler, Hermann, 116 
Dostoievski, 74 

Drama League of Berlin, 70, 73 f 
Drama League of Leipzig, 107 
Drama League of Munich, in f, 119 f 
Dreyer, Max, 78 

Education, university, 30 f 
Education, workmen's, 35 f 
Eisner, Kurt, 88, in, 119 
Entertainment theatres, 63, 68 
Erzberger, Matthias, 9, 12 f 
Expressionists, 13S 

Faculties, German university, 31 f 
Faculties, Gymnasium, 48 f 
Falckcnberg, Otto, 121 f 
Faust, 71, IDS 
Fehrenbach, Konstantin, 9 
Fischer, Karl, 52 f 
Food-profiteering, S 
Franck, Hans, 72 
Frederick the Great, 23 
Freie Biiline, 74 
Fulda, Ludwig, 78 

German National Theatre, 98! 
Goethe, 22, 23, 71, 78, 79, 88, 96!, 

119, 134 
Goltz, von der, General, 58 
Grillparzer, Franz, 78, 129 
Gurlitt, Ludwig, 49 f 
Gymnasium, German Classical, 48 f 

Haenisch, Konrad, 34 

Halbe, Max, 74, 78 

Hamstering, 6 

Hannover, 19 

Hardenberg, Karl August von, 23 



^37 



138 



INDEX 



Hardt, Ernst, 97 f 

Hauptmann, Gerhart, 26 f, 62, 71, 74, 

77 f, 83 f, 136 
Hebbel, Friedrich, 71, 74, 78, 88, 135 
Hellbrun, 127 
Herder, 96, 102 
Herzogpark, 117 
Heyjermans, 78 
Hofbrdu, 109 f, 114, 121 f 
Hormannsthal, Hugo von, 80, 129 
Hohenzollern, 1 1 
Hollaender, Max, 67 
Humanism, 134 
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 23 

Ibsen, 71, 74, 78 
Idealism, German, 23, 131 
Independent Socialists, 14 f, 85 
Internationale, Third, 15 

Jagow, Gottlieb von, 78 

Jansen, Wilhelm, 56 f 

Jena, loS 

Jessner, Leopold, 69 f, 84 

Jews, 13, 114 

Junker, 10 



Maeterlinck, 47, 78, 80 

Majority Socialists, 7, 9 f , 13, 14 f 

Mann, Heinrich, 27 

Mann, Thomas, 26 f 

Marx, Karl, 14 f, 41 

Mehring, Franz, 76 

Merz, Alfred, 36, 38 f 

Moissi, Alexander, 65 

Moliere, 78 

Mombert, Alfred, 136 

Moor, Karl, 52 f 

Motion pictures, 62 f, 68 

Mozart, 128, 129 

Munich, 22, 25, 109 f 

Mystics, 22, 47 

National People's Party, 10 f 
Naturalists, 47, 73, 13S 
Nestriepke, Siegfried, 90 
Nestroy, Johann N., 78 
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 22, 133 
Noske, Gustav, 7 

Oberammergau, 116 
Oktoberfcst, 122 
Opera in Berlin, 72 
Orgesch, 109 



Kaiser, Georg, 88 

Kammerspiele in Berlin, 65 

Kammerspiele in Munich, 121 f 

Kant, 22, 23, 95 

Kapp Putsch, 7, 9, 113 

Karlshorst, 18 

Kayssler, Friedrich, 82 f, 89 

Kestenberg, Leo, 89 

Kleist, Heinrich von, 71, 88, 13S 

Kornfeld, Paul, 136 

Krauss, Werner, 65 

Kultur, 24 

Lauckner, 88 

Leipzig, 45, 107 

Lenine, 15 

Lessing, 78, 106, 115, 134 

Liszt, Franz, 102 

Ludendorff, 7 

Luther, 18, 22 



Parties, German political, 10 f 

Passion Play, 116 f 

Paulsen, Friedrich, 49 

People's Party, 11 f 

Plenge, Professor, 45 

Poelzig, Hans, 127 

Potsdam, 48, 128 

Preuss, Hugo, 7 

Prinzregententheater, 112, 119 

Prussia, dismemberment of, 16, 109 

Prussianism, 23 f, 48 f 

Reformation, 18, 22, 134 
Reichstag, 9, 10 f 

Reinhardt, Max, 64 f, 80, 82, 129! 
Renaissance, 18, 134 
Residenz-Theater, 112 
Revolution, the German, 7 f, 96 
Revolution of 1848, 30, 46, 54, 100 
Revolutionary art, 93, 119 



INDEX 



139 



Rolland, Romain, 66 
Romanticism, 13S 
Ruhr, 7 
Russia, 15, 40 

Salzburg, 126 f 

Sassenbach, 36 

Saxony, 7 

Schauspielhaus, Grosses, 66 f, 129 

Scheid, Richard, iii 

Schiller, 23, 71, 74, 78, 88, 96 f, 129, 

134 
Schnitzler, Arthur, 78 
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 22 
Schubert, Franz, 129 
Schurz, Karl, 46 
Shakespeare, 71, 78, 83, 88, 128 
Shaw, Bernard, 78 
Silesia, Upper, 9 
Socialists, 7 f, 14 f, 25, 34 
Sorma, Agnes, 80 
Star System 68 
State theatres, 69 f, 118 f 
Stein, Heinrich von, 23 
Steglitz, 48 f 

Stinnes, Hugo, 9 f , 11 f, 13 
Storm and Stress, 18 
Strauss, Richard, 80, 129 
Strindberg, August, 71, 78, 83, 88 
Students, German, 31 f 
Sudermann, Hermann, 63, 72, 74, 75, 

78 

Toller, Ernst, 25, 136 
Tolstoy, 74 

Thirty Years' War, loi, 134 
Thuringia, 98 f 
Traveling Scholar, S3 f 
Treaty of Versailles, 8, 10 



Treitschke, Heinrich von, 23 
Troeltsch, Ernst, 16 f, 34 



Union of German Drama Leagues, 

90 f 
Universities, German, 30 f 
University of Berlin, 36 
University of Cologne, 36 
University of Frankfurt, 45 
University of Hamburg, 45 
University of Miinster, 35, 45 

Verhaeren, Emile, 47 

Viebig, Clara, 80 

Vienna, 125 

Volksbuhne, 81 f 

Volksbuhne, Freie, 75 f 

Volksbuhne, Neue Freie, 76, 79 f 

Wagner, Richard, 72, 129 

Wandervogel, 48 f 

Wandervogel, Deutscher Bund, 57 f 

Weber, Max, 34 

Wedekind, Frank, 71, 80, 88, 113 

Weimar, 95 f 

Westphalia, 45 

Wilde, Oscar, 78 

Wille, Bruno, 74 f 

Wirth, Dr., 9, 13 

Witkowski, Georg, 98 

Wittelsbach, House of, 11, 109 

Workmen's educational associations, 

35 f, 94 
World Revolution, 15, 21 

Young Guard, 58 

Zeiss, Karl, 112, 118 f 
Zola, Emile, 74 
Zupjgeigenhansl, 54, 57 



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GERMANY IN TRAVAIL 

By OTTO MANTHEY-ZORN 

PROFESSOR OF GERMAN IN AMHERST COLLEGE 

Recent observations of the spiritual conditions in Germany by a 
student of literature. Price $2.00, postage 10 cents 

MARSHALL JONES COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

212 Summer street BOSTON, MASS. 



Clje 9lml)erst iSoofes 

In connection with the celebration of her one hundredth anniver- 
sary, Amherst College began the publication of a series of volumes, 
written by Amherst men, to be known as The Amherst Books. They 
deal simply and clearly with matters and problems of significance 
and are addressed primarily, not to the expert and specialist, but to 
the general intelligent public. The list of volumes published and 
in preparation follows. 

THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

By ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

PRESIDENT OF AMHERST COLLEGE 

A frank and thorough discussion of the fundamental problems of 
college education and of the function which the college should fulfill 
in American life and thought. The topics discussed are arranged 
under four general headings: The Determining Purpose, The Par- 
ticipants in the Process, Discussions in Educational Theory and The 
Curriculum. Price $2.jo, postage lo cents 

THE LIFE INDEED 

By JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG 

LATE PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL AND LITERARY INTERPRETATION 
IN AMHERST COLLEGE 

The matured and genial philosophy of a much loved teacher who 
was widely recognized as a shrewd scholar in the fields of literature 
and religion. All the characteristic qualities of mind, revealed 
hitherto in his rhetoric, in his studies of Hebrew literature and in 
his interpretations of English poets, are here brought into play to 
build up a systematic design of the only sort of life to him worth 
living, a life founded on the Bible, his "great textbook of life." 

Price $j.oo, postage lo cents 

MARSHALL JONES COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

212 Summer Street BOSTON, MASS. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: jyj^ - 2001 

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